


Mute

by loquaciousquark



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games)
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, Psychological Torture, Rescue, Romance, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-22
Updated: 2011-06-22
Packaged: 2017-10-24 05:57:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 33,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/259798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loquaciousquark/pseuds/loquaciousquark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Blood mages kidnap Hawke for use in a powerful ritual. Rescue comes too late, and now Hawke must deal with the difference between survival and life. A kmeme prompt run rampant. Hawke/Fenris. Complete.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a kmeme fill that ran so far away from my original idea that in the end, all I could do was hang on for dear life and hope the story stopped before I did. Original prompt: _F!Hawke (mage preferred, but not picky at all) is kidnapped and brutally tortured by some rogue group in Kirkwall trying to use her for whatever reason. Maybe the Followers of She need her body for She to possess or something. Eventually, romanced!Fenris and the gang track her down and rescue her. Would love to see furious, super-protective Fenris during/after the rescue, especially if he swears in Arcanum. The worse the torture, the better, although anon would strongly prefer it to be physical and psychological, not sexual. Bonus points for Fenris having to carry Hawke at some point during the rescue._
> 
> Anon's wish was anon's ~~obsession~~ command. Enjoy!

**mute**  
 _part one_ **  
**  
* * *

Hawke wakes to total darkness.

For a split-second she thinks she's been struck blind. Panic surges in her throat with a whitewater rush that nearly chokes her before she can tamp it down, and the back of her head throbs with adrenaline and a thick thudding pain. Breathing deeply is difficult even aside from her fear—the air feels close and damp, as if it is trying to press her lungs shut in her chest, but Aveline's face rises in her mind, Aveline who is solid and steady and most of all doesn't panic (and would probably cuff Hawke upside the head if she saw her now, all atwitter just from _waking up_ ) _,_ so she swallows the worst of it and forces herself to breathe normally. Her captors have stripped her of her robes and staff, leaving her only a thin cotton shift; the room is not cold, but she shivers all the same. There's a buzzing in her brain behind the drumming ache that feels at once alien and familiar, like a loved voice speaking from very far away; she shakes her head, trying to dislodge it, and that is when she discovers that she is chained to the floor.

Her wrists are encased in thick metal manacles. A short length of fat chain joins them to each other, giving her maybe six inches of freedom between her wrists; she traces it blindly with her fingers and finds another, longer chain that branches off at the center and trails down to her bare, shackled feet, passing smoothly through the eye of an iron ring that protrudes from the clammy stone floor. The chain is not long enough for her to stand properly, but she can at least kneel if she crouches over the ring, so she pushes herself up in the darkness, trying to ignore the clinking links that jangle against her nerves.

"Okay. Okay," Hawke says aloud, as much to distract herself from the chain as to ensure she hasn't also been struck deaf. "All right. I was...what. I was in Hightown. No, I wasn't—I was in Lowtown. Visiting Uncle." Her head pounds in perverse agreement and she presses the heels of her hands against her useless eyes. "And then I picked up that tincture for Merrill's daffodils. And then—Isabela's hat shop. And then—and then—"

And then— _nothing_. Hawke shoves her fingers into her hair and pulls, unable to stifle a noise of frustration. It is a complete blank.

The manacles bore into her temples. She allows it for a moment—the pain there mutes the more insistent one in the back of her head—but there are curious bumps on the sides that dig into her cheek, and Hawke lowers her hands to investigate them more closely. The cuffs aren't smooth metal, as she'd thought; they're engraved with ridged, whorling patterns that glow in her mind, patterns she recognizes from a qunari called Ketojan—patterns used in the great collars to drain the magic of the Saarebas—and Hawke realizes with the clinical detachment of blind terror what the buzzing in her head is.

Her magic is gone.

Hawke stares into the nothingness around her— _in_ her, now, and tries to summon even the smallest spark of flame, of light, of _anything_ that will burn it away, but it doesn't come. Her magic buzzes too faintly, calling to her from across a chasm that gapes so wide she cannot see the other side of it. The sound of her own breath rasps harshly in her throat, too loud in her ears, and she opens her eyes as wide as she can, straining to see anything at all outside of the few square feet of stone she's acquainted herself with, trying to keep the panic from bubbling over.

Unexpectedly, a boot-heel clacks against stone. It sounds like an explosion to her heightened senses, but Hawke relishes it—she is not alone!— _fears_ it—she is not alone. There's a sudden sliding noise of metal against metal and then glorious _light_ shines through a narrow slit in her cell door (she has a door—she has an _escape_ ). She catches the briefest glimpse of a torch, of stone walls glittering damply, of two heavily-browed eyes that peer at her, light catching like pinpricks in their depths, and then the slit slams shut and her captor, and the light, are gone.

* * *

  
They leave her alone in the dark.

There is not enough slack in the chain for her to pace, so instead she sits on her heels and picks at her cuffs by feel alone with a hatpin her captors have missed. Isabela has taught her a few basic lockpicking skills, and though she doesn't have the skill to break the lock herself, even these little efforts are infinitely preferable to sitting in the dark and waiting to go mad. The panic recedes into something manageable and familiar as she fiddles with the manacles, undistracting and quiet, like the damp moist press of the air around her. Most of the first day passes in total silence save what she whispers to herself; although she does hear the heel of her booted jailor at one point, he does not give her light again.

It is impossible to imagine that she will be here for very long. It is a dangerous line of thinking, Hawke knows, blind hope that will more likely lead her to complacency than action—but all the same, she has friends, dear friends who will surely notice when she does not appear, a city full of people who know her as the Champion. Aveline, captain of the city's own Guard; Varric, with his finger on Kirkwall's pulse. _Fenris_. Surely, _surely,_ she will not go unmissed.

Surely, they will be able to find her.

At the end of what she guesses is the first day, she takes the hatpin and scratches a little tally-mark on the floor with a mostly-sane snicker. "Day one," she says aloud, letting the sound bounce dead against the stone walls around her. In her imagination, Varric spins a wild tale in front of the fire at The Hanged Man of the rescue of the Champion, prisoner a single day, and the patrons of the tavern laugh and clap their hands in delight like children.

Sleep comes fitfully that night, when at all; the Fade is barred from her with the cuffs, and she doesn't know how to sleep without dreaming. At last, somewhere in the early morning hours of the second day, Hawke gives up on sleep and sits up, curving her shoulders around the around the iron ring set in the floor. She rubs her wrists with her fingers and pulls them away wet; the cuffs are bloody around the edges where she has pried at them.

Her head still hurts something awful, and after two days without a drink, her lips are cracked and her tongue is parched. There is still no light in her cell and no boot-heel at the door, so instead she counts the links in her chains and thinks of a happy memory to go with each one. There are seven links between her wrists and seven links between her ankles, and twenty links even between those two chains. Thirty-four links, thirty-four happy memories. Most of them involve Fenris.

Hours pass with no sound. She dozes off and on when even her Fadeless sleep is preferable to the dark. At midday, or at least what she thinks is midday, she wakes up to the sound of sobbing echoing off her walls. It's a welcome sound, at first, proof of another life near her, until she realizes that it's her own voice bouncing back from the walls, her own cheeks that are wet. Hawke cleans her face, _furious_ at herself—how could she waste what precious little moisture she has?—and does not sleep again.

* * *

  
She is sure the sun is falling outside. Nothing changes in her cell, not the temperature or the dankness of the air or the darkness her eyes cannot adjust to, but she knows in her bones that sunset is approaching, the golden tongues of flame spreading across the sky to lick at the edges of the rose-stained clouds, softening light that would warm her right down to her toes, and she has never, ever appreciated it before. She will _,_ if she escapes. When. _When_ she escapes.

The boot-heel explodes on stone outside her cell again, and again the slit grates open with the screech of rusted metal, and again, the heavy-browed eyes stare at her for an instant in precious torchlight, light she tries to soak into every inch of skin before it vanishes. He scowls—Hawke is not sure how she has displeased him, being as she's the one imprisoned _alone_ in the _dark_ —and he turns to his side, mutters a command—and then her light is shut away from her. Hawke grits her teeth so hard her jaw creaks—she refuses to give them the satisfaction of hearing her frustration—and uses the hatpin to scratch a second tally-mark in the floor, next to the first one.

If she stretches her feet in every direction as far as she can with the limited chain she is allowed, she can touch eleven flagstones. She hopes Varric brings a full skin of water with him when they come to save her.

* * *

  
On the third day, there's a knock at her door so soft that she's sure she's imagined it. It takes her a minute to sit up—she's been sleeping, and she's half-convinced that she's dreaming—only she can't dream right now, can she?—and then the knock comes again, and the fog in her mind is shredded into sudden bright wakefulness. She tries to open her mouth, but her cracked lips stick closed with dryness and disuse, and they sting when she finally speaks.

"Come in," she says with as much cheer as she can muster. Her tongue is thick and swollen and her voice hardly sounds like her own, gravelly and thick and pitched low, so she clears her throat and tries again. "The door's open! Or...probably not."

The slit in her door slides open and she revels in this unexpected allotment of light, her heart leaping in her chest. Fenris, and Varric and Aveline and _everyone_ , they're found her at last, they've _found her—_ only it's not Fenris's eyes that appear in the little grating of her door, and her hope deflates so abruptly that it takes her breath away. Instead, it's the eyes of an old man, warm and with laugh lines around the corners; his eyebrows are white and whiskery and instantly make her think of silly old Barlin from Lothering. "You _do_ live!" he whispers, his fingers coming up to curl around the opening.

Hawke makes a show of pinching her arm with exaggerated surprise. "I'm as shocked as you are, I'm sure."

She is shaken from the fading rush of adrenaline and bitterly, bitterly disappointed, and yet she cannot stand to lose this point of human contact. The old man turns his head to the side and for a terrible instant Hawke thinks he is leaving her—but then she hears him, arguing with her still-unseen guard (guards?), and then another grate opens in her door, one flush with the stone floor and unbarred. "I'll try to get your time moved up, child," the old man whispers. "For now, this is all I can do."

Hawke doesn't have the faintest idea what he means—or who he _is—_ but she forgets to ask, forgets even to mourn the sound of his footsteps fading away and leaving her alone again, because pushed through the grate, just within the reach of her chains, is a little tin dish full to the brim of water. She doesn't dare to lift the dish—her hands are shaking with emotion and exhaustion, and she can't bear the thought of spilling a precious drop—so when the grates slam shut, leaving her in darkness and blessed privacy, she drops her head to the floor like an animal to a trough and drinks. The water is cool and clear and as holy to her as the sacramental wine in the Chantry, and it is, without a shadow of a doubt, the best thing she has ever tasted in her life. She drains the dish in a matter of moments and then cups it in her hands, swirling her tongue around its corners and crevices like a lover, searching out the last precious drops until there is nothing left, and then, when she is finished, she hurls it at the door with all of the strength she has left.

It bounces off her door with an embarrassingly pathetic _tink_ and rolls out of her reach. Hawke curls around the iron ring in the floor, tired and angry and _grateful_ and utterly, utterly ashamed.

* * *

  
There are five little tally-marks in the floor and another dented tin cup in the corner when the door to her cell bursts open. Torchlight streams down around her like the glory of the Maker—but it is too much, too _much_ —like needles in her eyes that have seen nothing but blackness for so long—she lets out an animal shriek and throws her hand over her face. The manacle digs into the bone above her eyes before it is dragged away by rough, gloved hands, the hands of her _captors_ and not her rescuers, and Hawke feels a sudden sharp pang in her chest that has nothing to do with the force of the men's grips, the men who open the iron ring in her floor and drag her, and her chains, from her cell because she no longer has the strength to stand.

She squeezes her eyes closed, trying to shut out the light. There are no tears left in her to ease the ache, but after a few silent moments, it recedes into something bearable, and Hawke manages to crack them open just enough to see the aged, well-worn leather of her guards' gloves wrapped around her upper arms; the torchlight shining on the jingling links of their chainmail; and the long, low-ceilinged hall they drag her down. Hawke does as best she can to track her surroundings: thick, heavy stone in the walls, too well-worked to be near Lowtown; torch brackets at regular intervals, tended and guttering with fresh oil; uncarpeted stone floors, utilitarian but clean; and over it all, the scent heavy in her nose, of damp rot, and of blood.

Her captors make no sound aside from the grunts of carrying her weight, not even when they approach a grand double door at the end of the hallway. It's nothing but planked wood and an iron latch, and yet it seems more ominous than anything Hawke has seen thus far, and even as the guards march implacably towards it, she tries to break free from their grasp. She knows it's a foolish attempt—she can do little more now than roll over and squall, like an infant might—and yet she _has_ to try, and she tries to push back, to twist like Isabela showed her ages ago.

The soldier on her right catches her elbow in one hand as it slides past him, plants his other on her spine, and dislocates her shoulder with a casual, practiced movement. The breath leaves Hawke in a soughing rush—she has no strength left even to scream, and the second man throws her over his shoulder with no discernible reaction. The next few minutes pass her by in a blur of creaking hinges and shuffling feet and agony pulsing from her fingertips with every step until the steps abruptly stop.

Eventually, like a meandering drunk, the thought drifts through her head that she is sitting. Upright, and in a wooden, high-backed chair set in the precise center of an enormous empty great hall, with her right arm dangling limp at her side. It is _such_ a struggle to focus her eyes and her thoughts; they scatter away from her the closer she tries to grip them, and she feels her head rolling on her neck. Then suddenly, strong fingers grip her chin like pincers—it _hurts_ and she tries to turn away, but another hand fists itself in her hair, forcing her to look ahead, and through the waning tears and the glittering of the torches, Hawke finds herself staring at a woman without a face.

The shock of it clears her head, if just for a moment, pushing the pain behind a curtain to be dealt with later. The woman's head cocks to the side, and Hawke realizes: the nothingness of her face is actually a thick black veil suspended from a heavily-worked gold band, a veil which covers her eyes and nose and flutters over her mouth with her breath. The fingers pinch her chin, turning her face from side to side, and then they release her to scrabble over her neck, down her collarbones, over her shoulders and breasts and ribs and waist, poking and prodding her like a side of meat in a butcher's shop.

"I go for four sovereigns a pound," Hawke hears herself say, and though the words don't come out quite right, she giggles at her own joke. She is distant with pain and damaged hope.

The woman straightens and her faceless head turns to one of the guards behind her, and with the sudden silent violence of lighting, a fist comes out of nowhere to slam into her jaw. Some of her hair tears free in the other guard's hand and her head ricochets off the back of the chair before lolling forward. Pain judders across her brain and she sinks under its weight; she finds herself too tired to lift her head again, so she watches instead the feet of the woman as they approach in dainty, pointed little shoes to stop just out of her reach. Her vision flares white with each heartbeat. There's a bloodstain on the floor next to her left foot, as if something has died and been dragged away.

"This one is best suited," the woman says. It sounds as though her voice comes from very far away, like her mother calling her home across the fields of Lothering. "But she will run if given the opportunity. Hobble her. Begin her training tomorrow."

"Hobble," Hawke slurs through swelling lips. She likes the sound of it, all bubbly and limping, and is so distracted that she barely notices when two more women in green veils approach her, their gloved hands gleaming with magic. "Hobble," Hawke singsongs, rolling her head back on her neck, "hobble, hobble, hobb—" and then the women touch her manacles with fiery hands, and then she only screams.

* * *

  
"My poor child, oh, you poor thing," groans an old man's voice in her ear.

 _It hurts, it hurts, oh, it_ hurts _—_

It takes a momentous effort to crack her eyes open, and when she does, she wishes distantly that she hadn't. She has not moved from where they'd thrown her nearly a full day ago, and her hands are the first thing she sees. They are curved in a grotesque parody of claws, the fingers swollen and sausage-like—she remembers, vividly, the sound they'd made as each bone had been broken—curling in on themselves so that the tips of her fingers twist in to the inside of her wrists, just brushing the ridges of her fetters. Her feet are no better, as the biting agony reminds her; her toes are bent at awkward angles, her ankles seized like iron. The broken bones are excruciating; worse is the spiking scarlet agony that throbs with each heartbeat, as if every muscle of her arms and legs is cramping at once, a vicious pain that goes on and on and on.

They have made her feet anchors to keep her, fixed unbearable weights at the ends of her wrists, and now, she cannot run.

She's not overly familiar with blood magic, despite the gentle offers from—from—from _Merrill, her name is_ Merrill _, Merrill of the Dalish, with dark hair and green eyes and a sad smile—_ so she does not know what magic they've used to harden the muscles of her wrists, her ankles, locking her broken fingers and toes in place. Not that she could do a thing about it with her magic gone, says a voice distantly through the blood pounding in her ears. She wishes she could stop her heart by will alone, if only for the sacred _silence_ it would bring.

Everything goes gray around the edges, suddenly, and she is content to let it—and then the old man who reminds her of—of—the name escapes her in the hazy red pain—he cradles her head in his hands and pours water down her throat. She slurps it greedily and chokes on it, and great racking coughs tear at her chest like fire. The old man smooths her hair behind her ear, his fingers cool against skin hot and swollen from her beating; he says something gentle and kind and comforting, and then he is gone, leaving another little dish of water and a tray of bread and soft cheese behind him. The door slams closed, but out of pity—or malice—or simple forgetfulness, her guards leave the little slit open, allowing a shaft of thin cold watery light to trickle over her damaged limbs.

She lies still a long time, looking at glitters of light on the chain that loops through the iron ring in the floor and letting the smell of the bread fill her nose. When the clawing hunger in her stomach becomes too insistent for her to ignore, she crawls to the tray on her elbows, her useless hands curled into her chest, her useless feet dragging after her, and savages the bread with her teeth until she can swallow it.

* * *

  
There's a terrific racket outside her cell. Someone is shouting—someone is _screaming—_ and then she hears the voice of the old man, kind and urgent—"This way, _this_ way, follow me!"

She sits up, her heart racing. This is not right—this is not the time of day when she is allowed sound or light or water or food—and then there is an enormous crash at her door as if someone in full armor has slammed against it. There's another cry of metal on metal (a sword, whispers her mind, a great sword screeching down the metal of the door), and then a man's deep voice rings out—

 _"Hawke!"_

Her lungs are empty and she cannot draw breath—she _knows_ this name, knows this _voice._ "Fenris," she croaks with thick tongue and split lips, because she _knows her name_ and knows _his,_ and terror that he might pass her by, might somehow miss her makes her try again, louder, " _Fenris,_ here! I'm _here!_ "

The violent sounds of metal, again—keys on the door, this time, and then her door crashes open and it is _Fenris_ standing there, blood-spattered and wild-eyed and with Varric and Aveline and Isabela behind him, and her heart nearly bursts through her ribs. "Fenris," she whispers, and he looks down at her where she crouches over the iron ring—

—and his lip curls in disgust. "Beast," he says in his low voice, and his eyes narrow in a sudden viciousness that shocks her.

She—she cannot believe it, and she stretches her hand towards him, her hand that is broken and buckled in on itself, and Fenris recoils in revulsion. "Contemptible," he snarls, "and _weak._ "

"Fenris," she whispers again, and this time it is choked with tears, "Fenris, _please—"_

Isabela shakes her head in the doorway, her earrings jingling softly. Aveline looks nauseated and pale behind her freckles. "Such a _shameful_ thing," Fenris hisses, and then he turns his back on her, and he stalks away from the cell—from _her_ , weak and wrecked and useless.

"So long, Hawke," Varric says sadly, and the door closes behind him.

She wakes up weeping in the wild delirium of terror and shame and agony, barely recognizing the faint burn of magic dribbling away from her, and the sound of the door closing echoes in her mind like an old song, over, and over, and over, until it is the only thing she can hear.

 

 

* * *

 

  
The Mother allows her magic if she is good.

She sits in the high-backed, wooden chair, very straight—the Mother does not approve of slouching—and directs her attention where the Mother points. When the Mother nods, she may raise her left hand, the hand that still moves easily, and use her magic against the wooden targets, just the little the Mother allows her and as the Mother directs. She has not slept in two days because she was disobedient and used more magic than she needed to make ice, but she accepts this punishment as her due. The Mother is kind to her when she does well and allows her visits with the old man who brings her good things and she is grateful when that happens, so she tries to do well often. Sometimes she fails, though, and when she does the Mother is forced have her beaten, so that she may remember the lesson better for the next time she is asked to repeat it. Sometimes she uses the willow switch that hangs from her waist which only welts her skin, but when she has been especially bad, the Mother has to ask the guards to correct her and that is more painful. When the Mother has finished with her for the day, her guards carry her back to her little cell with the iron ring in the floor because her feet do not work.

One night, the Mother ends the lesson early and stoppers up the magic from her hands. She is a little sad—she _likes_ the magic, more than she knows she should—but the guards bring the Mother a lovely soft armchair and she sits across from her with a very serious face. It is an unusual occurrence, and she sits up very straight in her chair with interest.

"Do you know why you are here?" the Mother asks, and her voice is gentle and warm like it is always gentle and warm, except when she is angry.

She shakes her head. She has not been given permission to speak yet.

The Mother leans back in her chair, her long thin fingers folded in front of her. "In three days, we will have a guest. _She_ is coming." A little thrill rockets up her spine at the word said like a name revered. She is curious despite herself, and the Mother smiles a little to see it in her face. "Shehas chosen to use you as a vessel, child. You should be honored."

Her chest swells with pride—she _is_ honored, now that the Mother has said she should be, a vessel to She who needs one, chosen above all others! She smiles at the Mother and something—something in the very back of her mind— _pricks_ her—says maybe she is _not_ so proud—and her smile falters, and when it does, the Mother's smile vanishes altogether.

"You are unsure," the Mother says with a sternness that makes her stomach flip. "The Lady Hanker needs a willing heart, my child. A vessel with a heart with an inkling of doubt in it would only kill Her. Do you _want_ to kill Her?"

The Mother's eyes are hard and she shivers to see it, but there _is_ doubt in her heart that she cannot shake—she does not want to be punished—but she cannot lie to the Mother—she buries her head in her elbows, her broken fingers brushing against the back of her neck, and lets out a quiet whine, a noise that she is not permitted and one she knows will be punished for, but she cannot lie to the Mother and she cannot do as the Mother asks and she does not know what she _may_ do—

And then a gentle hand alights on her back, and she hears the voice of the old man at her shoulder. "Hush, child," he says, always gentle and always kind, and she hushes. "Now sit up, child, like a good girl." She does, though it is very hard, and she cannot look the Mother in the face. The old man crouches at her side and his white whiskery eyebrows draw together in sympathy. "Now, listen to me," he says, and she obediently turns to face him. "Mother and I have waited for this friend for a very long time. You wouldn't want to disappoint us, would you?"

She doesn't, _oh_ how she doesn't want to disappoint them! But she cannot get rid of the seedling of doubt—and then he takes her unusable hands in his big warm ones, and he asks her with wonderful benevolent eyes, "Have I ever done anything to harm you?"

He has comforted her when she has brought beatings on herself. He has brought her food and water and light when she is allowed it. He has held her and spoken to her and he has never harmed her. The seedling withers in her heart.

She shakes her head: _No._

His mouth curves up at the corners. She mimics the expression. "Do you trust me?"

 _Yes._

The Mother smiles.

* * *

  
The morning of the day she is to become the vessel for _She_ comes. She can tell that it is morning because there is a little cup of water and a piece of hard bread nudging her rigid ankle, and when she is sure that she is fully awake and that her chains are where she thinks they are, she turns herself on her elbows and eats the bread and drinks the water. When she is finished, she nudges the dishes into orderly position with her wrists, and then she curls herself around the iron ring, a little giddy, a little nervous, but mostly excited, and waits for the Mother to come.

There is a neat little row of lines carved into the stone by her cheek, lines that she knows better by feel than by sight, even though the guards rarely close the slit in her door now. She makes one of the lines every night in the stone with a little metal stick pinched between her wrists in her room with the iron ring. Frivolous as it may be, it brings her comfort, and the Mother has not disallowed it, and so she treasures them as her own private possession. She runs the outside knuckle of her left hand along the scratches, counting them silently until she reaches the very last one, the one she made the night before, the one that makes twenty-nine even little lines, and then she starts over again.

She has just reached the third count through when she hears a very distant scream. It is an unusual sound because she is not the one making it, and she sits up on her elbows in curiosity. There is another scream and a great clashing crashing metal noise and suddenly she is _afraid,_ because it is closer to her than the first one, and none of these are sounds she is allowed. A man's voice shouts something and it is not voice of the old man—she does not know what this can mean and she worries—what of the Mother? More clashing, more screams, an angry rattling cacophony growing ever nearer—she is well and truly frightened now, and she pulls her thirty-four links of chain as far away from the door as she can.

An enormous burst of crackling magic explodes just outside her door, so close she can feel the thick itch of it making the hair on her arms stand on end, lighting up her cell for an instant like the sun— _the sun, warm and golden and gleaming—_ she shakes her head sharply and the image is gone. The noises of the metal clamor are so close to her now, maybe even in the same hall as her little stone room, and she can hear the man's shouting voice clearer. She does not know what he is saying—it sounds like nonsense syllables, _hok hok hok_ , and then more voices join him, women's voices and then more men, all saying the same thing, _hok!_ until the bouncing sound becomes a resounding echo that deafens her.

She hears footsteps pounding on the stone in the hall, an approach that is implacable and horrifying like the Mother when she is angry and she freezes, hoping against hope that she will be hidden in the darkness—and then with the shrilling of metal like the tip of a sword dragged against stone, the footsteps stop, there, right _there_ outside her room.

A shadow falls across her little window. Two glowing green eyes flare in the open slit for a split-second before they widen and vanish—she hears the slick-thick squelch of flesh against flesh and then a thud and she knows that the last protection she has—had—is dead. The back of her right hand skates over her little metal stick and she picks it up, clutching it to her chest between her thumbs, her last safety.

The man calls out again _hok here_ and she presses the heels of her feet that do not work against the iron ring in her floor, desperately pushing herself as far from the door as she can. There is a faint tinkling metal sound—keys, her addled mind supplies, on a ring—and then more footsteps, a rush of them that thunder towards her sanctuary, and a crush of babbling voices accompanying them.

"Which one is it?" the man's voice says, low, urgent.

"It's faster to pick it," says a woman. Her voice is deep and sooty and unhappy— _wrong—_ and she shakes her head again, unsure why she thinks so. The lock on her door rattles—and then it clicks— she is faint with terror—

—and the door swings open.

* * *

  
So many of them stand shadowed in her doorway. She sees two women and one—no, two men, all crowding in, chief among them a tall, blood-spattered man with pointed ears and white hair; they are limned in light, backlit by the torches in the hall, and she cannot see their faces for the shadows.

"Lethellan," cries a female voice, a word she does not recognize—and yet does. The man with the white hair raises his arm—an enormous sword fills the room and she throws her own arm in front of her face as a paltry shield—her metal pin flies from her grasp to skitter on the floor as one of the women gasps and—and—and the blow—does not come.

Her heart hammers in her chest. Silence presses down on her in her little room, too much silence for the four people plus her, and when it becomes too unbearable to wait for the killing strike to fall she dares to lower her arm, just enough that she may glimpse—

 _"Light,"_ snarls the man that towers over her and she _cringes_ away from him. His bare foot takes a half-step towards her and she does not _want_ to die—she wants to help the Mother and be the vessel—but there's a snapping pop of magic from the doorway and a cool blue glow springs from the littlest woman's hands, a pale woman with dark hair and green eyes and no trace of a (sad? why would she be sad?) smile on her face. The light washes over her and she closes her eyes, turning her face away from it lest it burn her.

"Maker, have mercy," one of them breathes—the other man, the very short wide man she forgot to look at.

" _Hok,_ " chokes out the woman with the sooty voice, and then there's a harsh pattering of footsteps running out the door and away from her little room, down the hall towards the still-faint sounds of metal and magic.

She hears the gentle creak of leather and a clank of iron on stone, and when she dares to open her eyes again the man with the white hair is kneeling beside her. His blade is on the ground beside them; her eyes flick to it and then to him, but he makes no motion towards it at all. She blinks in the soft blue light. He feels dimly of magic, somehow, faint and familiar—then his hand flies towards her face, a vicious, metal-clawed hand, covered in blood that gleams wetly in the torchlight—and she recoils, throwing herself as far from him as she can. The chains tangle around her ankles and she falls, landing awkwardly on her good elbow.

Hurt soars to the top of her head and floats there like oil; she sucks in hissing breaths through her teeth as silently as she can—even from them, she has not been given permission to speak. The man makes an inarticulate noise and she senses movement in her direction, but the woman still standing at the door says something in a soft voice that she can't quite make out, and he stills. "The chains, Varric," the woman says, quietly, and the short man moves, then, to crouch at the iron ring in her floor—he is called _Varric_ , she realizes, and she realizes that she _knows_ he is called Varric—an image flickers in her mind of a long thick wooden table, littered with dozens of empty tankards, and him, the dwarf, presiding at its head like a prince and grinning at her when she enters, calling her—

 _"Hawke,"_ says the elf who kneels by her, and it is no longer nonsense but a sound with _meaning_ , even if she can't remember that meaning right now. His hands are open, palm up, as if calming a wounded deer, and she sees tanned skin instead of metal—but it is his eyes she notices now, green, and hard, and bright with an emotion she does not know how to name. She—she _knows_ those eyes, somehow, though she is certain she should not. Her eyebrows draw together; it strains a newer cut on her temple but she is very skilled at ignoring that minor sort of pain, and though she knows that the Mother would be very angry with her, she wonders if, maybe, she should try to remember.

His face softens, just slightly—yes, she thinks, startled, that is _right_ —and somehow, a little of her fear ebbs. "We have to leave. _Now._ Can you stand?"

An order. She wants to obey, but: "No," the short man—Varric—answers for her. He twists his hand and her iron ring creaks open, the chain slipping through it, and his eyes follow the chain to her feet that do not work. "Look at her toes. They broke her feet too."

The littlest woman puts her hand to her mouth, her light winking out into nothingness, and drops her eyes. The man with white hair goes very still next to her in the sudden dimness. She doesn't understand—don't they realize that she was hobbled because the Mother knew she might run?—and then she feels his fingers brush her bare knee in the dark. It's not a _painful_ touch, not exactly, and of course she's had far worse, but she cannot suppress her instinct to twitch away as his hand skims feather-light down her leg to her ankles, rigid and unbending, and then over her awkward buckled toes. She feels him suck in a stuttering breath and then, inexplicably, he— _glows._ Markings she hadn't even noticed are lighting up with a burn of lyrium that she can feel even with her magic stoppered, spreading from his chin over his neck and down his arms, his eyes alight in a rage that terrifies her, his muscles so taut she can see them jumping in the light he is making. Her heart leaps into her throat and lodges there. She cannot move.

"Get a grip, elf. You're scaring her." The words are harsh, but Varric's voice is gentle. "I can't get the manacles off here. They're sealed with blood magic, and it'll take more time than we have to work them free now. Hold it together until we're safe and then you can light up Hightown all you want."

He swallows. It looks like a very difficult thing for him to do, and then he stands, sheathing his great sword on his back, and turns away— _"Beast," he says, snarling, "contemptible. Weak. Shameful."—_ she gasps for breath, blinded by his glowing skin and sudden memories that she cannot make sense of, memories that are there and then suddenly gone.

Gone—like her metal pin. She inhales sharply, remembering the _tink_ on stone as she'd lost it to the shadows of her cell. Panic rises in her throat and her chains rattle as she pushes to her knees, trying not to choke, the elf forgotten completely as she searches the ground for a tiny shard of light—

"Here, lethellan," says the little woman with dark hair and sweet, sad eyes, holding the hatpin—safe!—in her hands. Relief washes over her in a wave as the woman delicately threads it through her cotton shift over her collarbone so that it won't be lost from her crippled fingers again. Her hand cups her cheek for a moment, cool and gentle, and she feels the faintest wisp of magic against her skin.

"You sure that's a good idea, Daisy?"

 _Not Daisy,_ a voice whispers. _Merrill—called_ Merrill _, of the Dalish_. Merrill, who straightens at the rolling echo of a distant explosion. "She needs it. Like the others need our help, I think, and quickly." Merrill looks down at her where she crouches on the ground for one last moment, and then, clutching her staff to her chest, she darts through the doorway and out of sight.

Varric's hands are tense on his crossbow, like his eyes, like the air. "Hurry," he says simply, and then he is gone after her.

The elf puts his hand over his face. The metal of his gauntlet glitters, all edges of fire and pointed steel. The fading markings on his throat move as he swallows again, and when at last he drags his hand away, she meets that green stare that she's seen before, the one that she feels as though she _knows,_ and then he bends forward until his hair falls like a white curtain to hide it. "I am _sorry,"_ he breathes, so soft she can barely hear him, and then he gathers her in his arms, chains and all, and lifts her. She cannot help crying out; he is mindful of her hands and feet, but she has other hurts he cannot see, cannot know to mind, and the cuffs of his gauntlets bruise her side and his breastplate digs into her shoulder—and she can't help thinking of how very angry the Mother will be when she hears of this, and how very disappointed—and the old man will be so very _hurt—_

His thumb brushes against her cheek where the bone is broken, that same too-bright look in his eyes plucking at her heart to mute her fear, and then his face hardens, and he carries her through the door.

* * *

  
The next moments come only in flashes of light and furious sound. The noise of battle swells around her like a sea as he runs—screams of both men and women, the shriek of blade sliding on blade, the snapping sizzle of magic in the air—all twisting into a terrible driving roar that deafens her. She catches glimpses of the damp glistening walls, the flagstones, the guttering torches in their iron sconces, all of them flashing by in her vision like the half-dreams the Mother allows her when she has been particularly good. Merrill flits by in the opposite direction, her staff whirling above her head and then cracking against the ground with the sharp snap of a thorn. A man looming in their path bubbles a gasp and his sword clatters at his feet as he falls. "Keep to the east wall, Fenris," she shouts over the din, falling into step at their backs, and he nods in curt assent.

She doesn't even notice that they've reached the end of the hall, reached the double door that opens into the great room where the Mother allows her magic.

He is called Fenris. He is called _Fenris_ and she _knows_ him. She is certain of it.

So lost is she in the whispery rush of revelation that she doesn't even have time to blink when Fenris— _Fenris_ , who she _knows—_ ducks the flashing arc of a sword. Merrill cries out behind them and Fenris shifts all of her weight to his left arm, flexes the claws of his right hand—the tips shine silvering in the lamplight, and she _knows_ this too—and then he thrusts them through the chest of the guard as if it were water. The man looks surprised _,_ his heavy brows drawing together in confusion, pinpricks of light glinting in his eyes as he stares at the gauntlet blossoming from his chest; the muscles of Fenris's arm snap tight, the man lets out a soft sigh, and like he is simply grown too tired to stand, he slumps to the ground and dies.

She should be afraid. She should be _terrified_ , and she can see from the flicker in his eyes as he straightens her in his arms that Fenris expects her to be so, too—but she isn't. Instead, though she hardly knows why, she turns her face into his chest like a child seeking comfort, and he stiffens for an instant before he eases his hold on her waist. His hand cups the back of her head, a hesitating reassurance she senses he does not give easily—she feels him breathe against her, once—and then they are through the door and into the great hall.

It is chaos.

Everywhere she looks is lit with the blaze of magic and the flare of torchlight on steel; every echo she hears is choked with the spitting hiss of fire and ice and the wailing of wounded men. Fenris slips along the east wall with sure steps, his body angled between her and the fighting, and Merrill dogs their heels, her staff almost vibrating with the amount of power she pours through it.

"Aveline's taken the worst of it," Merrill says at Fenris's shoulder, and across the room a woman with red hair and full armor (a woman solid and steady and loyal, a woman who most of all does not panic) plants her booted foot in the middle of a man's chest and _shoves_ ; he tumbles head over heels and straight into a dagger that sprouts between his ribs. The dagger angles downward and, slowly, the man slips free and crumples into a heap at the feet of a woman with dark skin and dark hair, the woman with the sooty voice (a voice that laughs at her as she tries to pick a lock with a hatpin). "Isabela's warned the rest of them what to expect with Hawke, but I really don't think Anders quite—look _out!"_

Fenris has tucked her between himself and the wall before she realizes he has even begun to move. A great gout of flame billows around him, his shoulders arching over her like the hackles of an angry cat. It stains his hair gold as his head dips near her own; the tips feather over her forehead and his eyes lock to hers, lidded against the heat, half-wild and wary and _tantalizing_ in their familiarity—and then a body thuds into the wall beside them in a shower of ice and splinters.

"That...was uncomfortable." The man sags against the stonework before straightening gingerly, his robes shedding shards of ice that tinkle when they hit the flagstones. One hand grips an intricately carved staff at his side; the other flicks the blond hair escaping its tail out of his face. _Anders,_ her mind murmurs, and she blinks. A woman shrouded in a green veil darts by, her outstretched hand sparking with magic; Anders's staff spirals light and her feet lock in place beneath her. The edges of the veil flutter wildly as her head whips back and forth in search of the source of her paralysis—and then a bolt thwacks square in the center of her forehead, and the veil does not move again.

Anders whoops. "Good _shot,_ Varric!" he shouts, the dwarf's answering laugh almost lost in the cacophony of battle. He turns to Fenris and to her in his arms and his smile slips. "Isabela said—who—is that Hawke?" He ducks a stray arrow that clatters on the wall near his shoulder and nears until he can see her face. "Void take me," he breathes, and he grips his hair as if it is the only thing tethering him to life. "Hawke—Hawke—"

He is too close. His skin is hot and smells like scalded lyrium; her manacles tingle and she winces, pulling her mangled hands tighter to her chest over her hatpin, grateful when Fenris twists her out of the man's sight.

"There is no _time,_ mage," Fenris snaps.

Anders says something sharp in return but she misses it. She has glanced to the center of the great hall, empty of fighting like the eye of a storm, and in the center of the eye there is a wooden, high-backed chair—

—and standing behind that chair, tall and motionless and with her faceless black veil pointed directly at her—

—is the Mother.

Her breath seizes in her chest. She knew, she _knew_ that this would displease the Mother— _knew_ she should have stayed in her room with the iron ring in the floor—the Mother must be so _angry_ and _oh_ , she trembles to think of her punishment. Terror closes her throat as the Mother just—just _looks_ at her, cradled as she is in the arms of an elf the Mother does not know, saturated in sound and sight and light that she has not been allowed. Someone speaks to her, or near her, but she ignores it. She can hear nothing but the blood pounding in her ears.

The Mother raises her hand, palm up, and then she crooks her fingers in an imperious command. She _calls_.

She must obey.

The elf is strong but she surprises him all the same. She draws her manacled wrists back and strikes him across the jaw with all the strength she can muster—he staggers, shocked, and she hits him again and then magic _burns_ in her fetters, magic funneled to her hands by the Mother and she draws on it just as she has been trained, sucks out all she is allowed and no more than that, never more than that. Electricity bursts from her knuckles and tears into his chest with a crackling roar. He staggers again—his arms weaken around her and she _writhes_ , the chains twisting like living things around her body, sparking with her magic—and then she is _free_ , free and falling from his arms.

She hits the flagstones with a thud that knocks the breath half-out of her and jolts agony straight to her toes but there is no time for the pain, no time for the elf and the man she leaves behind—the Mother is _calling_ and she must _go—_ she pushes to her elbows and crawls on her belly, dragging her useless feet behind her like dead things.

"Hawke, stop! _"_ Fenris shouts behind her and her heart twists at a command she cannot follow but she cannot, _cannot_ be disobedient to the Mother. Men with naked swords pound past her on the ground where she crawls and engage Fenris and Anders in close combat, preventing them from blocking her path to the Mother who waits faceless and ever-patient by her wooden chair in the center of the hall. Her forearm slips in a puddle of congealing blood and her chin cracks against the flagstones so hard her teeth rattle, but she ignores the coppery taste of blood between her teeth, ignores the metallic howling behind her and pushes on—a body's length—an arm's length—she is so _close_ —

"My vessel," says the Mother behind her veil, and she presses her cracked lips to the hem of her robes in obeisance.

 

 

The Mother gestures to the chair and she levers herself into it, her damaged fingers scrabbling on the wood uselessly for a second before she can seat herself properly. Her pulse flutters—she learned the Mother's moods long ago, and never has she seen her so silent in rage. She stands pitch-black and statue-still; not even her veil shivers with her breath.

"Child," she says, "you fled from me."

She shakes her head mutely—no, not by choice, _never_ by choice—and the Mother backhands her across the broken cheekbone. Tears spring to her eyes and she blinks them away. The Mother does not like open displays of weakness.

"Hawke!" Fenris's voice is closer, but she will not look. She will _not_ be weak.

The Mother bends, then, and cups her face in warm hands. A soft perfume wafts from the veil; the Mother always smells wonderful. Her voice is like the coo of a mourning dove. "My child, have you forgotten your promise?"

To be the vessel. She has not forgotten.

"Good," says the Mother, a smile spreading through her voice, and she slides a long knife from her belt.

Her eyes slip closed at the sight of it, and she feels the Mother's hand skim from her cheek to her shoulder as she circles around the chair in the center of the room. The Mother's steps stop directly behind her and she tries to swallow the gorging fear—she trusts the Mother—doesn't she?—but she is _so_ afraid—

Long fingers slip into the hair at the top of her head and clench there, pulling back until her neck is stretched to breaking. Her hands flutter helplessly at the base of her throat—she is unable to speak, unable to disobey, unable to cast aside the fear in her heart—unable to remember, unable to _forget—_

" _Hawke_! _"_ Fenris's voice is desperate and violent and _wild_ and her eyes fly open. Aveline is staring at her in horror and somewhere Merrill screams, but they're not the ones she's searching for. The Mother is speaking words of magic behind her that she does not know and the terror rises with the knife—and then she _sees_ him.

He is spattered with blood, his own and others', and he strains against two men in battered plate who block his path, but Fenris is not looking at them. He is looking at _her,_ and his eyes are savage and sorrowing and too, too bright—

"Hawke," he says, and it is as if the entire room has gone silent save the sound of his voice, " _fight."_

She must obey—she must fight. _No_ , she mustn't fight, must not disobey the Mother. She wants—to be the vessel—she _wants_ to _fight—_

She sucks in a breath. The knife skates over her skin with the movement but she hardly notices it—his command is piercing through the fog like the clear ringing of a bell at dawn, a beacon blazing in her mind to burn away the veil that hides her—

 _Fight_.

Something breaks in the deepest part of her mind with a quiet _snap._

"My child. My _vessel,_ " coos the Mother in her ear.

—her name—her _name—_

Her hands fumble at the collar of her white cotton shift. The Mother begins to cut—

And the sharp edge shrieks against the fat iron links of her chains instead, drawn between her neck and the knife. The Mother tightens her grip on her hair, the black veil sucking in and out over her mouth in blind fury. "You dare to _defy_ me, child _—_ "

She pops her elbow up in a sharp motion that catches the Mother in the temple—her head snaps sideways and the knife flies from her hand to clatter against the stone—she twists in the chair to face the faceless woman—

"My name," she says, her voice harsh and guttural and rasping with disuse, "is _Hawke."_

And Hawke lifts her hands over her head, the hatpin clutched between them, and tears the veil in two.

* * *

  
Hawke doesn't stop to think about what's happening. The woman—not the Mother, ever again; she _had_ a mother and she lost her—is already screaming for reinforcements from the remaining soldiers she has, already spitting words of power like curses through a bleeding mouth. Hawke recognizes the greasy clinging of blood magic and demonic summoning and steels herself; her manacles might mute her own magic, but the woman had given her much more than she'd needed to fight Fenris, earlier, and Hawke is very good at taking no more magic than she is allowed.

With all the strength she has left, Hawke wraps her arms around the woman's neck, slipping the chains over her head like a grotesque necklace. She staggers with a screech at the unexpected weight and goes down, and Hawke, tethered to her like an anchor, tumbles over the arm of the chair on top of her.

For a split-second, they are eye-to-eye for the first time.

She is nothing but an old woman. An old woman with a painted mouth and fear in the rheumy eyes that water in the naked torchlight. Her fingers (long and bony, _fragile_ fingers—how has Hawke never noticed them before?) grope for the tatters of her veil, for the oozing slash that strafes down her face between her eyes, the last tally-mark of the harmless hatpin.

"Release me," she commands, as if the floor were a throne, her eyes boiling with magic.

Hawke falters. The urge to obey bears down on her mind like steel, its compulsion and the slavish desire to please vibrating in her mind, insistent and overwhelming. She shakes her head violently once—twice—reminds herself that the veil has been torn and she has seen behind it—and the blood magic slips its hold. Hawke sucks in a breath, and then she leans forward until her matted, filthy hair drops like a curtain around them, until her nose almost brushes the nose of the old woman. "I will not."

She presses her manacles flush to the woman's skin on either side of her throat. They shiver with power, the ridges and whorls flickering with electric light.

The skin over the old woman's neck wobbles as she swallows. Her voice is barely a whisper. "Let me live." She presses her hand against Hawke's where it is pinned under her fetters in a gentle, motherly gesture. Hawke looks at the woman's hand—and then she looks at her manacles and the aching tortured things at the end of them, and then she looks directly into the old woman's face where the whites show all the way around her eyes.

"I will _not_ ," Hawke says, and she opens the floodgates of her magic.

It is as if she has reached into the heart of a storm and grasped it for her own. Lightning pours from her hands like a river over the old woman's neck and through it. Her head bows back against the floor and her mouth opens in a mindless scream; sparks arc between her teeth, over the surface of her eyes that bulge from her head. There is still power left in the chains—Hawke pours it all in, puts in everything she has left. A bolt jumps to the wooden chair beside them and the wood chars instantaneously; she can smell the burning wood and burning flesh, the old woman's or her own, she doesn't know—the sheer silk of the black veil goes up in smoke—

—she hears the screech of metal, the slapping of feet against stone—

—hands, on her shoulders; hands, on her hands, pulling—

 

 

The world goes white. Hawke knows nothing more.


	2. Chapter 2

"Easy, Blondie." Varric's voice, soft, warning.

"I'm fine." Anders, now. Anders's voice laced with another whisper behind it, all acrid power and hot lyrium.

A gentle snort. "Of course. That's why your eyes are glowing."

Silence from Anders and Justice both, and then the cool tingling wash of healing magic dancing over her feet and her hands. It feels—depressed, somehow, and far-off, as if the caster is reaching the edges of exhaustion.

"It's been hours. You need to sleep. We all do."

The magic quivers against her skin and slowly siphons away, and then Anders's voice says, ragged and muffled through his fingers, "You're…you're right. That's all I can do for now. Merrill—your turn for the cuffs."

Her eyes are so heavy they might as well be glued shut, and yet the rest of her feels curiously weightless, as if she is floating a few inches above the bed. Candlelight flickers on her closed eyelids and she hears the crackling of a fire; she is inside, then. Her hands and feet feel peculiar and for a moment she can't place the feeling, and then she realizes—they _move._ Though her fingers and toes still throb, the healing not quite complete, they are _loose_ , free for the first time in a month; their bendiness is intoxicating, and she rolls her hands on her wrist for the sheer blissful ache of it. 

A faint step sounds beside her as a light weight settles on her bed at her hip, and then suddenly, there are soothing, gentle fingers on her forearm. _Merrill_ , her mind informs her from very far away, then lazily adds, _of the Dalish._ Merrill's hands trace the edge of the manacle where it meets bare skin for a long minute, probing the blood magic that still seals them. Hawke feels the green vine of her magic twining into the ridges of the fetter and then her power surges like a root delving into a boulder to break it, and with a lyrium-laced crack, the metal splits clean through.

Hawke's eyes snap open, weariness utterly forgotten. She can feel—

She can feel her _magic._

The chasm that has yawned in her mind for so long she can barely remember it not existing—it has not vanished, but it has _narrowed_ , and suddenly she can hear the voice calling from the other side through the buzzing, the siren song of the Fade crying out to her, distant but _there_. She stares ahead but sees nothing: not Merrill perched wide-eyed beside her or Anders hovering at her shoulder; not Varric in a chair by her bed (her bed, _her_ bed, in her room); not even Fenris, half-risen from his seat by the door. She is a drowning woman offered a glimpse of sunlight through the swelling waves, and she must breathe or go mad.

"Mer—Merrill—" whispers Hawke— _begs_ Hawke, because she _is_ begging and beyond caring about it. She will do anything, _anything—_ she will beg, if Merrill wants; she will debase herself at her feet; she will crawl on her belly for the rest of her life—if she will only give her back her magic. 

Varric puts a wonderful warm hand on her shoulder, but not even he can seem to find words to comfort her. Hot tears slip their way down her cheeks to pool in the hollow of her throat, lingering to sting in her cuts.  "Please. Please, please," she begs, until the word has lost all meaning and is just a collection of sounds. "Get them off, _please_."

Now Merrill is crying too, wiping the tears from her face even as she reaches across her stomach for her other arm.  "I will, lethellan, right now, only _please_ don't cry." 

Hawke's bare arm is narrow and filthy, crusted with dirt and dried blood and striped with infected sores where the manacles dug into her skin, and it is the most wonderful thing she has ever seen. She can't stop crying, regardless of what Merrill asks; when the second cuff bursts open and she feels another exhilarating flood of magic, when the chasm in her mind closes that much further, she presses the heels of her mangled hands against her eyes and lets out a dry sob.

The third manacle cracks. The chains draped over her waist begin to slide away; so used to their weight is she that she hadn't even realized they were there until they thump to the ground in a jingling heap. She feels Merrill pat her knee comfortingly, and then the last fetter splits right down the middle, and very quietly, the chasm in her mind—closes.

The buzzing is gone. The Fade is at her fingertips once again.

The sobs turn into racking, half-hysterical laughter. Hawke drags the palms of her hands down her face and the grit in the creases of her skin scrapes her nose. "Varric," she hiccups, desperate for a distraction, her voice thick with tears and grating with rust; she fears that if she loses herself in the heady rush of her magic returning, she might never find her way out again. "Can you—talk about something?"

His hand tightens on her shoulder. "Like what, Hawke?"

"I don't know." A giggle splinters out of her. "Anything. The luxury of your chest hair. Why the river runs to the sea. What happened to Aveline and Isabela? You know. _Mysteries."_ Fenris still stands by the door, his arms crossed tightly over his chest and his face unreadable. He is as tense as a nervous cat, as if he might bolt with a bottlebrush tail at the slightest provocation, and Hawke giggles again at the image.

Varric shakes his head with a smile, but there is wariness in the motion that he cannot hide. "Some of those are trade secrets, you know. Bound to the honor of caste and clan. No Champions allowed."

 _Some Champion,_ she thinks with more regret than bitterness. Varric shifts at her shoulder and she feels the pressure of his hand slide under her head to lift it—and then a skin sloshing full of water is pressed to her lips, and she forgets everything at the taste of it. Hawke sucks at it greedily, unable to control her gasping breaths between swallows, barely caring that her whimpers are almost wanton under the crackling of the fire. She drains the thing in a matter of seconds and leans back to the pillow with a choking sigh that sounds more like a sob.

Varric chooses not to notice. "Aveline's gone to the Keep to request a temporary reinforcement of the Guard so she can mount an investigation. There were pockets of these cultists all over the city—seemed like every night, more would pop up like pockmarks. Sure made it hard to track you down, too."  The chair creaks as he shifts his weight. "And Rivaini? She's gone to Blondie's clinic in Darktown for supplies. Apparently not even his friendly passenger can heal you all in one go."

"I heard that," says Anders, and Hawke rolls her head on the pillow until she can see him. He is pale, his skin drawn tight around his mouth and his knees unsteady under him; he looks as though he might either pass out or be violently sick at any moment. "Not that it isn't true," he adds ruefully. Steadying himself on one of the posts of Hawke's bed, he leans over Merrill and carefully touches one of the thick sores on her wrist with a finger. "These need to be cleaned as soon as possible. _All_ of you does, to be honest. No offense," he adds almost as an afterthought. "Maker, I need to sleep."

"Bodahn said there's a room downstairs set up for you. Rivaini can meet you there. You don't need to be wandering Kirkwall in this state." Varric sounds perfectly sincere, but unspoken is that Anders doesn't need to be far from Hawke in her state, either.

Anders hesitates, turning Hawke's wrist over in his hands. "I should take care of these first."

"I will do it."  Fenris's voice. Fenris, who is suddenly at her side like a ghost, drawing her hand out of Anders's, his markings iridescent in the candlelight.

Anders frowns, his mouth opening to protest—but Varric is already rising from his chair, already planting his hands on Anders's waist and pushing him to the door. "It's _fine,_ Blondie," they hear him say as they round the corner out of sight.

Merrill rises, too, and the bed shifts as her weight leaves it. She cups Hawke's cheek in her hands, her smile not quite as sad as Hawke remembers, and then she leans over to peck Hawke on the forehead. "Sleep well, lethellan."

"Thank you, Merrill," Hawke whispers, blinking against the press of threatening tears. "Thank you, thank you."

"Good night," she says softly, and she follows Anders and Varric through the door.

 

 

* * *

 

 

As the latch quietly clicks closed behind her, Hawke lets out a little shuddering breath. "And then there were two," she says, striving for lightness. She is so tired.

Fenris's expression tells her he is not convinced by her bravado, but he allows it to pass without comment.  "Orana provided some hot water and soap, if you feel well enough to bathe." His voice is a study in disinterest, as careful as his movements as he settles on the edge of her bed in Merrill's place and touches the shredding edge of her grimy cotton shift.  His breastplate and gauntlets are gone, she notices; his arms look strangely naked without them. "Or, if you prefer, you could rest instead." He holds her gaze steadily, neither pushing nor pulling, calm and patient as he waits for her to decide.

"I—" Hawke trails off, uncertain. A choice. She is being given a choice. It isn't even a difficult one—she desperately wants to be clean—but her mind flutters like a bird without a perch.

She is silent so long that Fenris's brow furrows in concern. "What do you wish to do?" he tries again.

Ah— _ah,_ she knows the answer to this one— _her vision is shot with stars by the time the hands around her neck loosen. The Mother's veil brushes her bloodied cheek, her voice a song in her ears. "What do you wish to do, child?" Her lips are swollen and she struggles to form the words—_

"Only your will," she whispers, relieved.

Fenris starts off the bed like he's been shot. Hawke's eyes fly open—she hadn't even realized they'd closed—to see him staring down at her, his green eyes wide with shock. He looks pale under his tan.

Hawke forces a painful smile. "Sorry. I didn't—"

"Hawke—"

 _"Please._ Don't." Don't make her think about it, the shame and the black veil and the stone room with the iron ring on the floor. Hawke draws in a breath, makes herself make a choice. "I'd like—to get clean. If you'll help me, I mean. I've got about as much strength as a soggy slipper."

"I'd recommend it," he says, his voice dry, but he still looks shaken as he fetches the basin of steaming water Orana has left by the door.  Hawke sits up cautiously; her ribs creak in warning and the switch-marks on her back spike pain and _everything_ aches, but for the first time in a month, she moves without the clanking of chains, and she revels in the silence of it. The muscles of her legs aren't strong enough to swing her feet on their own, so she digs her hands (hands she can move anytime she wants, fingers she can bend and flex and _feel_ ) under her thighs and pushes them over the side of the bed, one at a time. That motion in itself is exhausting, though, and she can do little more than wait for Fenris to set the basin and a pile of thick towels at her feet.

There's a little wicker stool with a red cushion by her desk; Fenris snags it with a foot and drags it over by the bedside. "Maker forbid we soak the sheets," Hawke mutters, more to be contrary than out of any real irritation, and allows Fenris to help her to her feet.  Though she has every intention of walking under her own power, Hawke's legs haven't borne weight in a month, and her knees buckle almost immediately. Fenris catches her around the waist before she can fall and lowers her to the stool without harm to anything but her dignity. Hawke snorts. "That went well."

Fenris straightens, his eyebrow quirking. She's _missed_ that eyebrow.  "And yet, somehow, I expect you will survive all the same. Raise your arms."

She does so at once, a little shiver of obedient pleasure overriding the cuts straining the skin of her back; something like sadness races over Fenris's face, but it is gone so quickly she wonders if she has imagined it. He says nothing, anyway, and gently slides her cotton shift over her head, peeling it free with care where it sticks to dried blood and old wounds. Her chin drops as it pulls free from the fabric and she stills, stunned by her own appearance.

"I am a _disgusting_ human being," Hawke murmurs, staring at her thighs.

Fenris's eyes narrow, his gaze suddenly snapping with green light. "You are _not._ "

She looks up, startled, then snickers. "I meant—no, Fenris. I meant _physically_." Physically, at least in this moment; there is a deep crevice of lingering shame and humiliation somewhere in her heart, but she doesn't have the strength to delve into it now, and more than anything she doesn't want Fenris to see the grime left deeper than any bath can reach.

She pushes through the moment before it can snag either of them, and unembarrassed by her nakedness, she turns her winter-pale arms over to show him the dirt encrusted in every crevice in her skin, the dried blood that sticks to the half-healed cuts scattered over her stomach and back, souvenirs of her more enthusiastic guards. She fingers the matted hair over her forehead and winces as Fenris picks something out of it. _Maker, please don't let me have lice._ "I think my hair's a total loss."

"It will grow back," Fenris points out mildly, dipping soap and cloth into the basin of water. He circles her chair and she senses him stop suddenly, arrested by the sight of the long welts that she knows spread from shoulder to hip. "Oh, Hawke," he breathes, barely loud enough for her to hear; she feels him bend, brushing his fingertips like ghosts over the weal that runs longest over her shoulders. She can't help but wonder if it reminds him of his own scars, can't help but wonder if he thinks the less of her for bearing them—but he doesn't linger overlong, and with a tenderness that surprises her, he begins to wash her clean.

The water feels incredible.  It has been rationed to her so severely for so long that it feels almost sinful to have it wasted on something as luxurious as a _bath._ She lets her eyes drop closed as Fenris sweeps the cloth over her bare back in long, smooth strokes, passing delicately over the places where the skin is split with the sure fingers of experience. It— _hurts_ that he knows so well how not to hurt her, that he knows from experience just how hard he may press a welt without causing pain, how to let the warmth of the water soak into her aching muscles without stinging the open stripes.  His hands knead through her hair and over the back of her neck with soapy water, working out the tangles as he rinses with slow, sure fingers. It soothes her until her head lolls forward, and then he draws the washcloth down over her shoulders in a fluid movement that leaves a cool damp trail in its wake. 

He dips the cloth in the basin and wrings it clean, then kneels in front of her. One hand cups her chin lightly, raising her face to his; her eyes are half-lidded and weary, and Fenris smiles at her in something like gentleness. He wipes her face clean with his other hand, lingering over her eyes and her mouth until not a speck of dirt is left.

"How did you find me?" Hawke asks eventually, when he seems satisfied with her face and has moved on to her neck. And then a thought occurs to her, and she adds, "Where _was_ I?"

The cloth slides over her collarbone. Fenris's eyes follow it, watching her skin for cuts to skim over; hers follow his. "We did not realize you were missing, at first," he begins, his voice pensive. "Each of us believed you were with the others or out on the Wounded Coast.  More the fool, I," he adds, with a wry twist to his mouth that cannot quite soften his self-recrimination. "But then the day arrived for my lessons, and you did not come." His gaze flicks up to hers, just for a moment, and the darkness in his eyes makes Hawke realize how worried he must have been.

"Not like you really need lessons anymore, really." She tries to sound flippant, but her chest tightens at the thought of Fenris waiting in the empty echoes of his emptier mansion for someone who would never arrive. "You're reading better than most of Kirkwall."

His eyebrow quirks, and she sees a faint hint of a smile tugging at his mouth. "It's not the lessons that I look forward to, Hawke," he says, and the words seem to curl right into her heart to warm it. His hand lingers on her neck just long enough to make her eyes flutter shut, and then it slides away. The cloth dips with a noisy splash into the water, and when Fenris speaks next, his voice is more businesslike. "I came here that evening. Your man, Bodahn, said he had not seen you in four days. He was…"

"Fretting like a hen at an egg breakfast?"

The corner of his mouth twitches up again. " _Understandably_ distressed. I thought to seek out Varric, that perhaps you had neglected to mention some previous plans, but Isabela arrived at your estate just as I was leaving. She'd come to speak to you as well—a missed appointment at a…hat shop, I believe, in Lowtown." _That stupid hatpin,_ Hawke thinks with a rush of gratitude, and his fingers graze her shoulder. "We were searching in full force by nightfall."

The cloth brushes over her bare breasts and stomach and then stills; water drips from her hair onto his wrist. "You have lost a great deal of weight," Fenris mutters. His thumb bumps over her ribs one-two-three, like a child taking a stick to a fence.

"I hear that happens with starvation diets," Hawke says, her voice light. "Varric said there were pockets of these cultists all over the city."

Fenris's mouth thins, but he allows her to redirect the conversation. "So there were." He soaps the washcloth again and his hands resume their trip down her stomach. "We did not realize who they were, at first. They seemed like nothing more than the latest plague of fanatics. But then, when you had been gone ten days, we intercepted the first letter."

"Letter?"

"Isabela found it on the body of one of the cultists. A Follower of _She_." His voice drips with scorn at the name. "It contained a declaration of intent from one cell of their wretched clan to another, stating that the Champion of Kirkwall was to be sacrificed in order to restore a great power that had been lost." He snorts, as if the very idea is too clichéd to be taken seriously, and Hawke wonders, not for the first time, what exactly the magisters of Tevinter considered commonplace. "Written in blood, signed in blood."

Hawke rolls her eyes, grateful for his derision; it keeps her own simmering hysteria at bay, at least for the moment. "How tasteless. I can just imagine the state of the printing blocks after that mess.  _And_ it was my blood, probably; I don't remember anyone else providing that sort of ink."

"Probably." He dodges a particularly vicious slice in her thigh and straightens her knee to clean the back of it. "But there was nothing in the letter to tell me _where_ to search. It seemed as though the cultists nearly threw themselves upon our swords every night, but they carried nothing of worth. Even the ones who survived killed themselves rather than speak and we could not— _I_ could not—" He crushes the cloth in a sudden fist and turns his face until his hair hides his eyes.

Hawke curls her hands as best she can around the tense lines of his jaw, pulling him back to face her. He _cannot_ break in front of her, not now; if he falls apart she will fly into a thousand pieces, like glass. "How—" she starts, but her voice catches and she has to try again. "How did you find me, then?"

Fenris closes his eyes for a moment, turning his cheek into her palm, and then he draws in a long breath and relaxes. Her hands fall back to her bare lap. "Varric bribed every messenger in the city.  It took…a very long time, but at last the Followers of She sent another letter announcing their impending revolution. It said that the vessel had been prepared adequately, and that soon their _She_ would be walking among us once more."  He pauses with her damp foot propped on his thigh. "I was grateful to them, then," he admits, voice rough, though he meets her gaze now without hesitation. "Because that meant that you still lived."

His smile is bitter, but so is hers. "They wanted to make me an abomination, I think. For a demon named Hanker."

"I wonder that they simply didn't force it on you." He finishes with one foot and switches to the other. The soap smells magnificent, and it is suddenly very hard for Hawke to stay awake. It feels _wonderful_ to be clean.

"The Mo—they said I had to be willing to become the vessel. I suppose that was important enough to them that they felt they could take the time to make me so." She shrugs one shoulder, seeking refuge in callous unconcern. "They must have sent the letter the night I said yes."

The markings on his neck ripple as he swallows. "That was two days before we found you in the catacombs under Hightown."

"Blood mages and catacombs. I'm hardly surprised." Hawke yawns the last few words and Fenris pushes up from the ground, pulling a towel from the stack Orana has provided.  He pats her dry, gently, and wraps it around her like a blanket.  She pulls it closer over her shoulders as Fenris then turns down the coverlet and, despite her protests, lifts her bodily back to the bed. "I'm not a child," she grumbles as he fetches a roll of white bandages from her desk.

"No," he agrees, joining her on the bed. "Just as weak as one."

Hawke stiffens in shock, the breath rushing from her chest _—Fenris recoils in revulsion. "Contemptible," he snarls, "and_ weak _—such a shameful thing." He turns his back—stalks away from the cell, away from_ her _—_

" _Hawke_." The room snaps back into focus. Her room, with her bed and her fireplace and Fenris grasping her arms above her sores, tense with worry.

It takes her a second to remember how to breathe. She shakes her head like a dog to clear it and her back twinges in protest, the pain just enough to remind her of where she is—and where she is not. "Just a dream," she says at last. "Or a memory of one."

His hands slide from her arms and he reaches for the bandages again. "There will be more," he says as he wraps her ankle where the sores from the manacles are the worst. She knows he speaks from experience.

"Probably."

He doesn't press her, and they are silent for a few moments as he finishes her other ankle and moves to her wrists.  When he is finished wrapping the last one, he tears off the bandage with his teeth and tucks in the loose ends. Hawke shakes her head again, just to be sure the cobwebs of memory are sufficiently swept back, and then she tugs at the cloth on her wrist. "New cuffs," says Hawke lightly. "Gauzy. I like them."  She mock-admires his handiwork, turning her hands to and fro like a hawker in the market before Fenris scowls and draws her fingers into his lap.

She doesn't try to resist, even in play. Her momentary amusement is sapped away by the blank grey fog of fatigue, and she watches quietly as he touches her wrist. His hand traces the edge of the white bandages, the lyrium lacing his fingers glowing faintly in the candlelight. They ghost over her palms, her still-sore knuckles, dance along the inside of her wrist where her pulse beats.

"I thought," he says, so soft she can barely hear him, "that not knowing whether you were alive or dead was the worst thing that I had ever felt." He straightens out each finger of her hand, laying them side by side on his open palm as if to prove to himself that they are no longer broken and twisted, and then he smoothes his hand over the knuckles in short, tense strokes. She can't help but fold her hand around his, though the muscles of his neck are whipcord tight and his jaw works to get out his next words. "Seeing you in that cell, chained to the floor, was—unbearable, Hawke."

The hot sting of tears pushes at the back of her eyes. "I had dreams," she whispers, horrified that she is saying this aloud but unable to stop herself, "that you left me there to die." Her face crumples and he slides a hand free to cup her cheek, her tears defying her every attempt to keep them at bay.

His thumb feathers over her swollen cheekbone, green eyes bright with anguish, and then Fenris dips his head forward until his forehead rests against hers, until his lips brush her cheek where it is broken.  "I am sorry I took so long," he whispers against her skin. His voice is low and heavy with emotion, his careful detachment crumbling all at once to overwhelm them both.

Hawke shakes her head mutely, unable to speak past the sudden lump in her throat. She swallows once, then twice, and then manages, "I'm just glad you came."

Fenris _moves_ , sudden and fierce, wraps his arms around her and pulls her into his chest in one swift movement, buries his head in her shoulder like a man seeking home. " _Always_ ," he breathes.

Her heart leaps to her throat, then, and the prickling tears begin to spill over her cheeks in earnest. One of his hands slides into her hair and the other curls around her waist, pulling her so close against him she can barely breathe, his arms tightening around her as if he is terrified she might vanish. She cannot tell who is trembling more.

Hawke presses her face against his chest, fevering with pain and exhaustion and terrible relief, and she weeps.

 

 

She doesn't cry often. She's not a pretty crier for one, her red, blotchy cheeks and puffy eyes a far cry from the demure weeping of fairytale princesses, and besides, she's never been one for crises of emotion; all the same, Fenris's jerkin is soaked through by the time exhaustion stops her tears.

Hawke lets out one last shuddering sigh against his shoulder before she pulls back to free her hands, shoving her damp hair out of her eyes in a game attempt to save face. Though he watches her with concern, Fenris allows his arms to loosen until his hands fall to her waist; his fingers stroke against the towel still draped around her like a cloak, and she is grateful for the warmth.

"How do you feel?" he asks, and the naked worry in his voice sends a little tingling itch up her spine.

"Mmph. Soggy." She swipes at her eyes with the corner of her towel. "I think the Maker's trying to keep me humble."

He snorts. "I suspect even He might find that task formidable."

"Well, if it turns out like the Canticle of Andraste and the seas rise and devour you, then you'll know whose pride's to blame." She pats his hand where it rests on her hip. "I apologize in advance for any Maker-dispensed smiting."

Fenris frowns, but she yawns until her jaw cracks. "You should sleep," he says, his hands sliding away from her waist as he rises from the bed.

" _No!_ "

The word tears out of her in a blind panic. Fenris stops dead where he stands half-turned and stares at her—her fingers have twisted into his shirt of their own volition to pull him back, and she can't quite make herself let go. Hawke lets out a little breathless laugh which does nothing to ease either of them. "I don't—I mean, I can't promise I'll be a good bedfellow tonight, but, _please_ —I don't—"

The next words stick in her throat in as she hears her own desperation. She forces her fingers to unclench, to free him.  _I don't want to be alone._

But it doesn't matter; even as her hands are withdrawing his are reaching to catch them in his own, his long fingers swallowing hers to still their shaking. He grips her hands until she looks into his face. "I would not leave you alone tonight, Hawke," he says, and in his throat is a protective growl that warms her right to her toes, "even if the Maker Himself commanded me to go."

"Thank you," she gasps, too relieved to be embarrassed. His eyes soften at the corners as he frees her hands, and then he straightens again to undo the clasps down the front of his coat.  His deft fingers make short work of the fastenings and he shrugs off his tunic to toss it to the desk; his gaiters and leggings follow, and then, as naked as she is, he banks the fire in the hearth and extinguishes all the candles but the one burning nearest Hawke on the nightstand.

"I assume you will wish to leave this lit," says Fenris as he pulls the towel from around Hawke and helps her lie down.

Hawke glances at the markings that twine over his bare skin; they are interrupted here and there by cuts and fist-shaped bruises, the unpleasant remnants of her rescue. When she realizes that he is watching her watch him, she forces a wry smile. "Unless you plan on glowing the whole night instead, I'd prefer it."

His eyebrows shoot up in amused surprise, but he inclines his head. "As you wish," he says, and then he circles the bed and slides between the sheets beside her.  Hawke feels a split-second of uncertainty—she has been so long without a bed that doesn't quite remember how this goes—but then Fenris is carefully pulling her back flush against his chest, arranging the coverlet around her shoulders, draping the heavy weight of his arm over her waist. "Rest," he murmurs in her ear, and as simple as the order is, she relaxes almost immediately. His mouth presses against the nape of her neck, then, his breath tickling over her skin, and she feels rather than hears him say, "I am—relieved that you are safe, Hawke."

She snickers, an exhausted sound that flops into her pillow as it leaves her mouth. "Only relieved?" She laces her fingers into his, reveling in the simple pleasure of being able to move her hands as she wills, to touch his with her own, without pain. She hopes his presence and her tiredness will allow her to sleep, at least for tonight; she prays that together they will stave off the nightmares that creep at the ragged edges of her wakefulness, waiting to drag her under their pain-dark sea with long bony fingers.

"No," Fenris says, his arms closing around her to chase away her spidery fears, "not only that." He kisses her neck again, and then his lips begin moving against her skin in a measured cadence, a slow, steady litany of Tevinter words whispered smooth and soft through the quiet popping of the fire, curling around her heart and mind and soul with all the assuring warmth of total safety.

And she _is_ safe, in her own room and in her own bed with a candle guttering gently on her nightstand, with clean skin and clean sheets and her own magic humming at her fingertips, with Fenris's words wrapping around her to keep her so.

 _Day one,_ Hawke thinks, and her eyes drift shut to the quiet rhythm of his voice, to the solid beating of his heart at her back.

 

The blackness does not blind her.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Day one, as it turns out, as well as days two, three, and the early part of four, are lost to sleep and a mild fever.  Hawke remembers very little of it (a sensation she is growing quickly accustomed to); the days pass in the shifting scenes of the Fade, broken only by Anders coercing her to eat and by the dreams that wake her screaming.  The faces are never the same when she wakes; sometimes she can see Aveline's red hair over Anders's head, and sometimes Merrill is the one who holds the spoon to her lips, and sometimes it is Varric reading her his latest masterpiece. Fenris is the one constant she can remember from moment to waking moment. He shadows her shoulder as Anders rouses her during the day, sits in a chair by the door as Varric reads, pulls her more securely against him at night when the nightmares tear at her mind.

The first night, she dreams of the old man cradling her head in his hands, whispering soothing nothings as the Mother pries out Hawke's eyes with her thumbs. Hawke awakens in a rush of panic, her throat still rasping out a violent cry, the sheets beneath her soaked through with sweat and sticky with fear; Fenris is already propped over her on one elbow, lines from his pillow creasing his face—or is that worry? she can't think straight, can't shift the stony terror sitting deep in her stomach—Hawke reaches for him with shaking arms and pulls his weight down on top of her, desperate to know he is real, that _she_ is real, desperate for an anchor in the muddy shuddering seas of her mind.

Fenris buries his face in her neck, ignoring her sweat, pushing an arm between her shoulders and the sheets to secure her under him, and the loose strands of his white hair drift over her cheek as he turns his mouth to her ear, resuming the murmuring stream of Arcanum. His voice is rough and rumbling with sleep, but he speaks until her shivers slow, until her hands unclench from their white-knuckled fists to palm the curve of his spine, until the last vestiges of her fear twist into nothingness under his insistent solidity. 

Eventually, she manages to sleep again. Her last thought before she succumbs is that surely, this first nightmare will have been the worst; she thinks this all the way up to the second nightmare, where her manacles shrink around her wrists, crushing bone and flesh and muscle beneath them, and surely _this_ is the worst; then the third nightmare comes and her feet shrivel at the ankles to withered stumps that she drags on the stone behind her, the toes falling off one by one like overripe grapes. They come one after the other, chasing across the Fade like wolves eager for her blood, blurring the edges of what is and what is not until there is nothing between them and every one of them leaves her breathless in blind fear.

In the end, Hawke learns to mute her shifting trembling terror in Fenris's strong shoulders, in the pulses of his heart at his throat, in the words skimming over her skin. It is not a perfect solution—she would prefer something a little more dignified, frankly, than mindless screaming every few hours—but for now, it is enough.

 

 

And then, on the morning of the fourth day, she wakes clear-headed and _rested_ for the first time in a very long time. Fenris stands half-dressed at her bedroom window, one hand holding the curtain aside to allow a shaft of cool morning light to fall across his bare chest. His markings nearly glow as the sun glances off them, and she traces them with her eyes absently until they disappear into the waistband of his leggings. He turns, then, as if he has felt her gaze on him, and when he sees she is awake he lets the curtain fall free and pads over to the bedside.

"Morning," says Hawke with a yawn, pushing herself into a sitting position. "What day is it?"

"The sixteenth of Bloomingtide. You have slept for four days." Fenris rests the back of his hand against her forehead and draws it away, satisfied. "Your fever has broken."

"Another enemy, vanquished." She runs her fingers through her hair, yawning again, and wipes away the last of the sleep from the corners of her eyes.  The nightmares seem such a distant thing in the sunlight, and her mind is almost unbearably clear. "Bring the next to fall before my feet."

Fenris brushes her hair behind her ears, his mouth hinting at a smile, and she drinks in the sight of it. "Since you speak of them," he says, his eyes glinting with rare humor, "the mage says that your own are mostly healed. You might consider conquering the standing position."

"A worthy foe indeed." Hawke wiggles her toes under the sheets to barely a twinge of pain, and she makes a pleased noise in her throat. "Anders does _such_ good work. Come here and let me borrow your arms."

"You have had them for days," Fenris says drily even as he braces her elbows with his hands. "That still does not satisfy you?"

"Absolutely not. Nightmares never count." Hawke swings her legs out from under the sheets, delighted that her strength is returning at last, and places her feet carefully on the carpet. She hesitates a moment, making sure her toes and ankles and knees are where she thinks they are, and then Fenris pulls and she pushes and just like that, she is standing on her own two feet. Though she sways dangerously and her knees protest by threatening to buckle, Hawke is nearly giddy with pride.

One of her short robes lies folded neatly on her nightstand (courtesy of Orana, Hawke guesses, as it smells faintly of lavender); Fenris helps her into it and knots the belt at her waist. Her knees feel treacherously rubbery under her and yet she can't stand the idea of lying down another minute, so she gestures at the window, and Fenris wraps an arm around her shoulders as she takes her first shaky steps in over a month.

It takes her much longer than she'd like to cross the room that suddenly seems foolishly huge, but when she falls forward at last to lean on the stone sill of the great window, she cannot suppress her laughter. "Victory!" Hawke says triumphantly, and loops her arms around Fenris's waist. It is early enough that the streets of Hightown are still empty and silent, too soon after dawn for the citizens to yet be about their business.

He rests his chin on the top of her head. "Victory indeed. Soon you will even master feeding yourself with a spoon and speaking in full sentences."

"Toddlers everywhere will be so proud."  Hawke closes her eyes, soaking in the sunlight. It is pale and watery with morning at the moment, but she can feel the promise of heat behind the clouds; it will be a warm day in Kirkwall, hot andbright and _glorious_ , and she relishes the very thought of it.  "Do you think Anders will let the prisoner go outside today?"

Fenris makes a noncommittal sound that rumbles in his chest under her ear.

"Hmph. Typical. You _always_ side with Anders."

There's a catch in his breath and for a moment Hawke thinks she's actually offended him—and then it catches again, and she realizes he is _laughing._ "Practically attached at the hips," she adds, absurdly pleased that she can still make him laugh, and thumps him gently on the chest with her hand.

Her fingertips brush skin that is not—right. Her smile suddenly vanishing, Hawke pulls away and turns her back to the window until she can see his chest clearly in the light, and Fenris's own laughter dies.  There are two lightning burns on his chest, just under his collarbone, the patches of skin angry and rippled and just about the size of Hawke's fists.

"Ah," says Hawke. "I did this."

Fenris doesn't insult her by hedging his response. "Yes."

 _And—_ she remembers, reaches up and tilts his head away from her until the shaft of light falls squarely across his cheek, lighting up the sickly greening bruise stretching over his jaw. "This, too," she says, softer.

Gently, Fenris pulls her hands away from his face. "You were not yourself."

"Don't make excuses for me. Oh, _damn_ it." Hawke shifts until she is mostly-seated on the sill, her back to the silent streets below them. She has not worked her own magic in a very long time, but this is _intolerable_ —she can barely believe she turned against him so easily; she can stand less the idea that he still bears the wounds. "Stand still."

"Hawke, do not—"

"Fenris, I swear, if you tell me not to strain myself I will—I'll tell Isabela what your tattoos look like. In _detail._ Now. Stop. Moving."

It is hardly a serious threat—not even Hawke would be so heartless—but though Fenris's lips thin in disapproval, he allows her to rest her palms on the burns. Hawke breathes in, and then out, carefully sending out a quiet call to the pool of her magic. It is slow to respond, at first, sluggish and turgid as if it has settled with disuse, but she pulls just a little harder and then it _comes_ in a rushing stream, singing in her skin, pouring out in a cool blue light up and over Fenris's chest and jaw like water.

The temptation just to let it all flow out of her until she is empty is almost too strong. The skin knits under her fingers and the edges of the bruise recede into themselves; she is drunk on her magic, drunk on freedom, drunk on the feel of his skin sliding under her palms—

"That is enough, Hawke. Stop."

Her magic fizzles out at the order as if he has turned off a tap. Hawke blinks, the blue light leaving afterimages in her eyes that blind her; when her vision clears, she sees dark eyebrows drawn down over green eyes and sighs inwardly.  "It's fine," she says, knowing even as she does that it is useless. "I'm fine."

He shakes his head, apparently rejecting several things before they leave his mouth; at last, he says, "I would only ask that you exercise caution in the future. Not even the Champion may escape public displays of uncontrolled magic."

"Now you're just being gentle." Hawke smoothes her palm over the rightward patch of shiny, new-healed skin on his chest, feeling the lyrium in his markings quietly pulling at her fingers. "I can be gentle too," she murmurs, and then she carefully leans forward and presses her lips to his chest where she has wounded it.

She feels his breath hitch again—she doesn't think it's from laughter, this time—and his hands grasp her shoulders to stop her or steady her, she doesn't know. She doesn't stop, though, and doesn't hesitate; her mouth passes briefly to the other place on his chest that is burned, and then Hawke curls her hand around his neck and pulls his face down to hers, so that she can reach the nearly-vanished bruise on his jaw.

Here, at least, she lingers. She traces his jaw with her thumb and follows it with her lips, brushing his hair out of the way where it is longest; when she feels the knot on the bone under his skin where the manacles had struck him the hardest, she darts out her tongue to lave over it, letting this be the apology she cannot voice. Fenris bites out something in Arcanum, his voice low and strained, and one of his hands slides to the windowsill to brace himself over her.  Hawke hums against his jaw and feels him shudder; she lets her fingers wander to his ear and her mouth follows, and then her thumb grazes from his earlobe to the very tip.

The deep growl in his chest is all the warning she gets. The hand still on her shoulder suddenly grips the back of her head; she sees his eyes flashing more dark than green behind his silver hair and then his mouth is sealed over her own and the rumbling in his throat soars right through her. For all that she'd accused him of being gentle this decidedly is _not_ , and yet she revels in it, rejoices that he is not treating her like a fragile girl to be carefully kept from breaking. Hawke opens her mouth under his, lets his tongue slip between her lips, winds her arms around his shoulders and pulls him closer because it has been thirty-four days too long and he _still_ isn't close enough.

His leg nudges her knees apart and slips between them until he is pressed flush against the windowsill and she is flush against him. Her hands skim over his back, his arms, his chest, following the burn of lyrium in his skin like a map to guide her; his own move more slowly over her body as if he is trying to memorize the feel of it under his fingers. At one point he probes a muscle still bruised deep in her back and she gasps into his mouth—"Don't you _dare,"_ she adds when he starts to pull away, and nips his bottom lip for trying. Fenris growls again and she shivers at the sound; she kisses him while his throat is still rumbling, and the vibration thrums like a living thing in the air between them.

He bends closer to her and she arches her back to match him, ignoring the twinges of protesting muscles in favor of the heat slowly coiling in her belly. She sweeps her tongue over his and his hand spreads over her neck and her shoulders, the calluses on his palm slipping rough and wonderful over the freshly-healed skin, his fingers splaying into her hair to adjust her head better to fit his. His other hand ghosts over her breast through her robe, glides down her stomach to tug at her cloth belt.

"Fenris," she groans against his mouth—it's not enough, she has been without his touch for too long and she needs _more_ —he makes a deep, possessive noise and squeezes her hip, then slides his hand under her thigh and pulls her knee up to his waist.  Hawke lets out a sigh laced with frustration—it's better, but still not _enough_ —her palms graze down his stomach and she feels the muscles jump under her touch. His mouth drops to her chin, teasingly brushes down her neck to the tendons of her shoulder; she lets her head lean back against the window jamb, baring her throat to him as she threads her fingers into his hair—

"Oi, _Hawke!"_

Her eyes snap open. Fenris freezes against her. "Oh, flames," Hawke breathes, and turns to look out the window.

Isabela stands at her front door, looking up with a broad smile on her face. Aveline stands beside her with a covered basket dangling from one armored arm and her eyes hidden by the other.

"Not that I'd ever say no to a free show," Isabela calls, voice thick with laughter, "but Anders said you'd be up today, so we brought breakfast!" She elbows Aveline, who raises the basket without removing the hand over her face.

Hawke lets her head smack back against the jamb as Fenris shoves away from the window, retreating to the dim safety of her bedroom. He snatches his shirt from the dresser and snaps it open as a steady string of Arcanum invective spills into the room. His scowl is as black as thunder, and despite it—or because of it—Hawke snickers. She can't help it, and when Fenris throws her a dark look and shoves his arm into the wrong sleeve, it turns into a full-blown laugh that she has to muffle in her hands.

She turns to look back out the window in hope of a distraction, the stifled chuckles struggling to burst out of her. Aveline is red-faced with lingering embarrassment, but Isabela looks immensely delighted, a look that only grows when a particularly vicious " _Venhedis!"_ floats out over the Hightown streets.

"Morning," Hawke says with a glance over her shoulder, choking back laughter. "You're here, um. Early."

"It's past eighth bell. Not so early. Especially not for you two, it seems."

Hawke snorts. "Give me one good reason not to have Sandal chase you off my stoop."

"Breakfast," Isabela singsongs, waggling the basket on Aveline's arm. A wicked look enters her eyes. "Unless you're already _full…"_

Aveline yanks the basket away from Isabela with a hissed word Hawke can't quite make out, then, still blushing, looks up at Hawke grinning on the windowsill. "Donnic made flatbread. With nuts, the way you like it."

"Donnic's _nuts_ ," Isabela calls up with a little mock-shiver, and Aveline throws her free hand into the air in exasperation.

Hawke shakes her head, still suppressing giggles. "Let yourselves in. I'll be down in a minute."

With an exaggerated salute from Isabela, they disappear into the front door; a moment later, Hawke hears their voices mingling with Bodahn's in the entryway, and very carefully, she slides from the windowsill to stand on her feet.   She tugs her robe back down around her knees and runs her hand through her hair, trying to pat it into something presentable. Across the room, Fenris finishes the last clasp on his jerkin with an audible huff of irritation, and then he scoops up the soft leather boots Hawke wears indoors and brings them to her. He helps her slide them on and then straightens, a frown still lining his face.

"Oh, don't be angry," Hawke says, smoothing out the crease between his eyebrows with her thumb, though even she can still hear the faint traces of amusement in her voice. "Donnic made flatbread! You like his flatbread, don't you?"

Fenris leans forward, then, braces his hands around her on the sill until his whole body is flat against hers, until his lips just brush her ear. "I would prefer to have something else at the moment," he murmurs, and Hawke feels the heat from his lips on her cheek spread straight down to curl her toes in her boots.

"You certainly know how to charm a girl, don't you?" she asks, a trifle breathless, but Fenris only smiles.

"Breakfast," he says, offering her his arm too innocently, and Hawke fans her flushing face as she takes it.

* * *

Breakfast, as it happens, is a perfectly sumptuous affair. There is Donnic's flatbread (Aveline pointedly ignores the lascivious licks Isabela gives it every time she glances in the pirate's direction), along with two fresh round loaves, but there is also a veritable garden of fruits and vegetables, including more varieties of berries than Hawke can even recognize, much less name.  The moment the smell hits her nose, though, it hardly seems to matter; she is absolutely _ravenous_ , hungry as she can never remember being in her life, and Orana has barely placed the plate before her before it is empty.  She goes for seconds, and then thirds, letting Aveline and Isabela talk over her head with occasional comments from Fenris. Hawke is content to simply eat.

When she goes back for a fourth helping of berries, Fenris pulls her plate away from her with a warning glance. She understands she shouldn't eat too much—and she's stuffed to the brim, anyway—but it still almost physically hurts her to see food go uneaten and wasted.  He hands the plate to Orana, and then, as if a thought has occurred to him, pushes back from the table to follow her from the room. Hawke hears him say "soft foods" and "clear soup" and privately resolves to speak to Orana on her own later; she _refuses_ to exist on a menu consisting of watery gruel. Absolutely refuses, point-blank, and woe betide the elf who tries to get between her and a tender cut of braised beef, dripping with its own juices, still simmering with wet heat—

"And now," says Isabela grandly, and Hawke's attention jerks back to the breakfast table, where Isabela is pulling the basket towards her and rummaging through its innards, "the real reason for the visit. Or my part of it, anyway. Aha!" She withdraws her hand, grasping a thin metal blade—Hawke feels her heart stutter in her chest before the rational part of her mind tells her, quite firmly, to _get_ a _grip—_ and Isabela opens the blade at the base with a flourish to reveal—

Scissors.

Hawke tries to catch her breath, hoping no one has noticed her slip, and Isabela turns to face her. "Hawke, my dear girl, you are in bad need of a haircut. Now I know these are not my usual daggers," she says, brandishing the scissors with a _snap,_ "but I do know my way around a coiffure or two, and right now, yours is screaming…well. _Corpse-y."_

"Corpse-y."

Isabela shrugs. "Corpse-y. Corpse-ish, _cadavre_ _chic,_ if you like. It's not a good look for you, poppet, is what I'm saying." She rifles through the basket again and comes up with a short black comb and a little hand-mirror that she hands to Hawke as evidence.

Flames _._ She _does_ look…corpse-y.  Her cheeks are hollowed, throwing the bones into sharp relief; her hair hangs in dark, thin clumps to her shoulders, still matted in the places where Fenris had not been able to work them free. Her eyes are sunken into her head, strangely bright in the shadows under her brow. Hawke sighs heavily and pokes at the circles under one eye, dark from both fatigue and drained blood, then prods the half-healed broken cheekbone that is still yellowed with bruises.

Isabela meets her eyes in the mirror and smiles sympathetically. The corner of Hawke's mouth turns up in response—even now, Isabela's smiles are infectious—and drops the mirror to her lap as the scissors make their first _snip._

There's a knock at the front door, and Hawke starts to turn to look before Isabela lets out a disgruntled sniff and straightens her head again. A few moments later, Bodahn's voice sounds in the entryway, and Varric enters the room with his writing-case slung under one arm.

"Morning, Hawke," he says, slinging the case onto an empty place at the table. "Ready whenever you are."

Hawke blinks as a stray hair falls onto her eyelashes. "Good morning to you, too. Ready for what?"

Aveline shifts, then, straightens her kerchief with an unnecessary movement as Varric glances at her. "Hawke. I…" she trails off, sighs, adjusts her headband. "Look, Hawke. I promise that I would not be asking this if there were another way, but…I need to take down your account."

"My account," Hawke repeats. Isabela's scissors click quietly over her head.

"I am not allowed to authorize a full investigation without a…witness's account."

Hawke tries to laugh, but it comes out strangled. "A victim's account, you mean. Thanks for buttering me up with breakfast first, then."

Aveline nods, unsmiling. "A victim's account. We know there are more clusters in the city of these fanatics, but the Guard is spread too thin for us to manage them on our own. We need reinforcements, and to get them, I need you, Hawke."

"It's nice to be needed." Hawke lets out a breath. Even the thought of trying to explain her captivity, her little room with the iron ring in the floor is making her heart race. She closes her eyes, knowing that a month ago she would have already been charging out the door, stupidly grateful that Fenris is not here to see her trying to pretend she is not a coward. "I don't—can't we just go look for them on our own, later?"

She hears Aveline sigh, and then Varric speaks, his voice unusually serious. "There are other girls, Hawke."

Her eyes open, but she says nothing.

Varric is looking straight at her, a sheaf of empty pale parchment under one hand and an inkstand in the other. Next to him, Aveline tugs at her kerchief again and takes over. "I didn't want to say anything," she admits, "but yes. Other girls—all women, all mages—have gone missing. They've been taken from everywhere: the streets of the Gallows, from their homes if they were apostates, even from the Circle itself. You were not the only woman we found in that prison, Hawke."

She remembers— _there is a bloodstain by her chair in the center of the great hall, as if something has died and been dragged away—_ and suddenly, she knows what Aveline is going to say. "I was just the only one still alive," she says for her, and Aveline inclines her head.  She presses the heel of her hand against her eyes, trying to push back a sudden headache, then pulls it away in a sharp motion. "Fine," she says. "Fine. Just—Varric, don't turn this into a—story."

"Wouldn't dream of it, Hawke," he says softly, and sets quill to paper as Aveline begins her questions.

The first questions are easy enough: what did she notice about her surroundings, did any of her captors mention other locations, did she ever see the other girls. The next questions are harder, and Hawke finds herself shutting her eyes in self-defense against the pity she knows she will see in their faces. She tells Aveline of her cell, when she asks, and of the chains too short for her to stand; of the slit in the door that afforded her her precious light and sound when she was allowed it; of the bread and water she was given once a day when she had done nothing to have it taken from her. 

Isabela fluffs her hair in a comforting distraction, the dark ends of it just brushing her jaw, now, and then Aveline, voice almost steady, asks her about her injuries, and Hawke balks. It's not that she doesn't want to help—she _does,_ because it kills her that another girl might be going through the same thing even as they speak—but oh, it _terrifies_ her to speak of them, because those memories are still too near the surface and she dreads to step back willingly into the place where she had no name, no will, where she was nothing but a vessel and nothing but the Mother was real.

"I—" she starts, and her mouth is too dry; she swallows, but it doesn't help, does nothing to stop her voice trembling. "I—" She cannot tell them this, even though Fenris is not here to hear it—she _cannot._ A silence falls over the room, thick and cold like a winter fog, muting even the soft snipsof Isabela's scissors—and then the scissors still, and Isabela enfolds Hawke in her arms from behind.

The pirate's bandana slips a little over her dark hair as she nestles her cheek against Hawke's. She smells of salt and the sea, reminds her of clear skies and crisp white sails swelling full in the freeing winds. "You don't bend your head to anyone, my girl," she murmurs. "You are stronger than them."

"Not then, I wasn't." A bitter laugh escapes her and she drags a hand over her face to muffle it. "If I say it out loud, it—I don't know. It becomes—real. And I don't know if I can keep that reality from—" Her throat closes and she makes a helpless gesture in the air. Isabela's arms tighten around her, a silent reassurance that she is not alone, and Hawke tries to force back her trepidation.

"I swear," Aveline says, "I would not ask this of you if I did not need it."

She knows that's true, knows that her head at least has decided to speak, but fear still sticks her tongue to the roof of her mouth. She searches Aveline's face, looking for the last impetus she needs to break her silence, and though she suspects the other woman does not know precisely what Hawke needs, she gives it all the same when she says, "Tell me what happened, Hawke."

And so Hawke does, the command unsticking her tongue, and Isabela's arms loosen as she steps back. At first, she waits for Aveline to ask questions before she speaks, but by the time she gets to the training in the chair in the center of the great hall, her mouth takes over like a faucet with the handle snapped, and her words rush out too closely for Aveline to get a word in.

She tells them _everything._

She starts with the chair, with the women in black veils who'd twisted her hands to break them; she tells them of the old man who brought her food and water, who taught her that he was the only thing to be trusted; she tells them of her thirty-four links of chain and the eleven flagstones and the dreams they gave her to dull her hope. Aveline tries to say something, to stop her, maybe, but she cannot, _cannot_ stop now, because if she does, she will be lost where she leaves herself, so she tips her head forward until it is braced on her closed fists and keeps talking.

She tells them of the training, and of the Mother. Even she can hear the note of reverence in her tone when she begins to speak and it takes a conscious act of will to suppress it, even when she tells them of the beatings and the punishments for her recalcitrance—and she was recalcitrant often, in the earliest days of her training—and of the days when the Mother and her guards left her sagging in the chair, back alight with fire, mouth thick with blood and vomit, and everything in her perversely grateful to have even that human contact.  She explains, too, how the Mother used her disobedience to sap her of her will, how she teased her with tastes of magic until she became a woman dying in a desert of thirst, willing to do anything, _anything,_ to touch it again.

She hears movement in the room: a footstep, a murmured word, but she ignores it. It feels as though she is speaking of someone else, or watching herself speak from very far away, unable to stop herself and unable to interfere. She has been ordered to speak and it is a terrible relief to obey that order, so she continues to tell Aveline what she wants to know.

She tells them of the demon Hanker, and of herself as the vessel and the old man who convinced her to be so, and she tells them of how she learned to shy from the memories that displeased the Mother, because those were memories that only brought her pain. How one by one she severed names from faces and faces from meanings, her childish dreams of rescue turning in on themselves like an enormous whirlpool, dragging everything she remembered, everything that _hurt,_ into its violent undertow. 

She tells them of how she ceased to think of them at all, until her world became the Mother, a cell, and a hatpin to scar the floor with, and then—she is finished.

She is finished. There is nothing left to say.

The room is silent save the last scratchings of Varric's quill. Her eyes feel hot, dry, and gritty, and her voice is as hoarse as if she has been screaming. She coughs to clear it and just like that, she crashes back into herself, the distant feeling gone, and she is made suddenly and starkly aware of exactly how long she has been speaking, of _what_ she has said. Leagues beyond what Aveline had asked, what she needed to reveal; she has spilled out everything she never in her life meant to actually say aloud. 

Fine. _Fine._ She has told them, now let them dare to pity her. Hawke throws her head up defiantly, knowing she looks like a fool, her bruises and cuts a testament to her definitive _lack_ of strength when she needed it most, but she is through cowering at the memory of the Mother's feet. Except—there's none to be had. Aveline's eyes are watery, yes, and her skin is a little pale under her freckles, and Varric's hand doesn't look quite as steady on the page as when he began, but both of them meet her eyes in open honesty, sympathetic without a trace of condescension. Isabela stands off to one side, her arms crossed tightly over her chest, but Hawke barely registers her unusually tense figure, because she has looked from her face to the doorway where the footstep sounded earlier.

Fenris is standing there. Has _been_ standing there, has been there the whole time and heard every word, one hand on the jamb as if arrested mid-step by her laundry list of degradations. His green eyes are wide and staring straight at her, _into_ her, as if she is the only thing in the room, and in one terrible instant that steals the breath from her throat she realizes that the look in his eyes is not surprise but _recognition._

If she thought she had exposed herself to Aveline, she has laid herself bare before him.

He sees into her as if she were glass, all of her pain and her shame and her debasement laid out before him, a sacrifice to the humiliating altar of helpless gratitude, and she drops her gaze to her knees before she cracks. She should never, _never_ have spoken so freely where he might hear— _he_ , of all people, who would know best the bitter frustration of impotent servility, and who knows now because she _told_ him, _idiot,_ that she did not chafe against her shackles by the end but reveled in them. She cannot imagine the abhorrence he must feel to know that she learned to cherish her captivity; she cannot block out the quiet echoes of the thing she fears most— _"Beast," he says, snarling. "Contemptible, and weak."_ —that rattle in her head.

It is not until he crosses the room in three swift steps that she manages to break her paralysis, to turn her face away from him. He stops a handsbreadth short of her knees, looming thick and silent and his skin _hot_ on hers even across that distance. Her words hang like an ocean between them, a wide surging sea that any moment might split open to swallow them both.

"You should probably go away," Hawke says, off-handed and light, like she is not burning from the inside out with shame.

Fenris puts one hand on the back of her chair and leans over, just enough that his words stir the hair behind her ear. "That will not happen, Hawke."

"I recognize nothing if not a cue. So long, Hawke," says Varric in a brilliantly cheery tone, and wood creaks as he and Aveline push away from the table in one motion, gathering their sundry papers and ink and lists of stupid horrible _revealing_ questions scattered amidst the remnants of breakfast. Isabela's earrings jingle softly as she pauses once at the door, only for a moment, and she throws a thoughtful look over her shoulder that Hawke can't quite understand. Fenris doesn't move in the slightest as they depart; but for the faint slow brush of his breath and the too-hot flush of his skin, she might have been alone.

"Look at me." Fenris's voice is soft and _commanding_ and she hates him for it, but the order thrums in the back of her head and she finds her eyes turning up of their own volition, just to the barest edge of his face.

"Go away," she says more softly, and this time there is a quiet wiry steel threading through her voice. "I'm serious, Fenris."

His eyes narrow. "I will not."

" _Please_."

He lets out a harsh breath that chills the back of her neck, and gooseflesh spreads down her arms. "You should not torment yourself like this."

She scoffs, fleeing behind the brittle wall of bitter humor. "Hardly tormenting. It's simply an appreciation for the right honorable Champion's utter failure to live up to anything even remotely approaching that title. I mean, come _on_ ; if you think about it, it's practically comedic how ineffective I was."

"Enough posturing. You should not be so embarrassed by their deeds."

She cocks an eyebrow, turning in the chair to face him fully, her earlier reluctance displaced by disbelief. "Oh? Because from where I'm sitting—" she gestures at her unsteady treacherous feet, her pale trembling fingers, her sunken cheeks and cropped hair, "—it's looking pretty embarrassing for everyone involved."

Fenris catches her hand in his and replaces it in her lap, straightening his arm in front of her so the sunlight burnishes the twining brands of lyrium in his tanned skin into sharpened silver.  "And this?" he asks, his voice level, his white hair falling into narrowed eyes that glitter like ice. "Should this shame me?"

She jerks her hand out of his. She wants to shove out of the chair and stalk from the room; she wants to run as far as she can get from this conversation and the bloody stubborn elf she's having it with, but Fenris is nearly pinning her to the chair and her knees are too rubbery to hold her anyway, so she settles for crossing her arms across her chest, trying to control the muscles jumping in her jaw. "Because that is such a perfect example," she says tightly, and then her words stick in her throat and she falls silent.

"Explain to me how it is not." His hand doesn't move from her thigh.

Her mouth is open already to answer him before she recovers herself. "Stop that," she snaps. "Stop giving me orders."

His eyebrow quirks like she's said something idiotic, and she can barely tamp down the sudden rush of irritation. "Do not obey me, then."

"If it were that simple, I wouldn't have a _problem_." Hawke struggles to rein in her rising temper; she knows he realizes exactly how impossible it is to be disobedient, that he's deliberately provoking her to uncover the root of her shame like a falconer flushing out a hunted bird. What irks her more is that it is _working_. "As you know perfectly well _._ We can't all be strong enough to—"

She clamps her lips shut, but Fenris has already seen through her. "Strong enough to run," he finishes for her, and there is a tone of incredulity in his voice that sends her shame spiraling into heady new heights.

"Can't tell you how much I appreciate your understanding," she says, struggling to recover her mask of indifference. "Means a lot, Fenris. Really."

His lip curls as he straightens, looking down at her in the chair from his full height. "I do not pretend to understand such foolish sentiments.  You were brutally conditioned for weeks to obey that woman and her cohort in every respect. It is little wonder that by the end you could not free yourself."

" _Ha_!" Her laughter is short and sharp and devoid of amusement. "And that's the thing, isn't it? The difference between you and me." She chews the inside of her cheek, desperately wishing she could at least stand eye to eye with him. "You spent your entire life as a slave. You didn't even know any other existence, Fenris, and yet, even with that lifetime of 'brutal conditioning,' _somehow—_ " she laces the word with exaggerated wonder, "—you were still strong enough to leave Danarius _on your own_ and—as you said—freeyourself."

His mouth opens, but she cuts him off with her hand. She can't keep the mask in place; it shatters like bone and her next words are flooded with all the despair and self-loathing and bitter frustration that she cannot swallow. "I was their captive for a month. One month. Thirty _days,_ Fenris." She drops her eyes, her naked soul suddenly on display, the grime, filth, and soft-bellied weakness exposed for his judgment. The white bandages on her wrists stare up at her in blank accusation. "And I forgot everything. Kirkwall, freedom, sunlight." Her voice softens, a lump rising in her throat at her own failures. "Your name. Thirty days, and I was theirs. Entirely."

He crouches before her in a swift motion that startles her into looking up again, and he looks—she doesn't even know how to name some of the emotions in his eyes. Shocked, yes, and blindly _furious,_ although the lyrium lit faintly in his skin is proof enough of that; bitter in the lines around his eyes, and grieved at the corners of his mouth; and still further under it all, there is a fierce, protective tenderness gleaming through like sunlight between closed fingers, and she recognizes at last the too-bright green stare he'd given her a lifetime ago in her cell. 

"The fault is theirs," he says, low and vehement, and though he has not given her an order, she suddenly cannot tear her eyes away. "The guilt is theirs. Your pain is not a testament to your weakness but to their depravity—the tortures that occurred in that cell stained their souls, not yours, and you _do not bear the shame of this, Hawke_."

She cannot speak. Suddenly she is in the chair at the center of the great hall again, and again his words are piercing through the shadows like arrowing light. His eyes hold her gaze without wavering as if that alone might convey his earnestness; his hands drop lightly over hers, strong and warm and _safe_ and she clings to him, home's harbor in a roiling tempest. It feels like something dark and oily is being pulled from her heart on a narrow line, thin and stringing and very slow, but it leaves the whispering clarity of absolution in its place.

"I did not win my freedom alone," Fenris says, and the words soak through her; she remembers the Fog Warriors, and his sister, and she realizes that the long road that stretches out before her has been trod before. Fenris knows better than anyone the struggles she faces, the furious guilty weight of knowing how completely she submitted to her captors, her _weakness_ , and he does not despise her—and that in itself does more to lift that weight than anything else has thus far. "And you will not be forced to, either," he adds more gently, and squeezes her hands to anchor her.

Hawke leans her head forward against his shoulder, nearly boneless with relief and a desperate sort of gladness and thousand emotions she can't even begin to sort through. It is not quite as simple as Fenris would have it; she cannot pretend her shame is a torch so easily extinguished, but maybe, maybe she can learn to dim its glare, to shutter it at her back and not be blinded.

 

She will have him to guide her through it, after all.


	3. Chapter 3

The next two weeks pass quickly, as if time is trying to catch up for all the days she spent asleep. Hawke spends as much time as she can outdoors, the sun her own personal addiction as she tries to gather the threads of her life back into her hands; there are a half-dozen jobs that have gone unattended in her absence, relatively inconsequential things like neighborly grievances and tracking down old business partners, and little by little, Hawke eases back into something like a rhythm.

Fenris even lets her leave the house unattended after a few days. Her feet are almost entirely healed, although she has a slight limp that she suspects will never quite disappear, and when she demonstrates that she can, in fact, run the full length of the dining room with nary a squawk of pain, Fenris concedes that she might be capable of holding a shopping basket on her own arm without collapsing in a wispy heap. Even though she still cannot quite sleep without nightmares, nor bear the dark without a candle, the peculiar kind of solitude of walking alone in a crowd of people is something she has come to treasure. Her acquaintances in Hightown greet her with gladness and something like relief; she suspects it is more the Champion than the citizen they are pleased to see, but in the end, she can't seem to make herself mind much.

Most days, she can trick herself into something like normalcy, as if her absence might be chalked up to an extended vacation along the coast rather than a cell under the streets of Hightown. Aveline even remarks on it once, when Hawke is visiting the Keep to acquire more of Donnic's flatbread. "You're readjusting so well," she says, tucking the cheesecloth over the basket.

Hawke doesn't tell her that Varric has had to take her home twice in the last week because a lamed beggar had pleaded for coin from her outside The Hanged Man, his shriveled hand twisted in on itself, leaving her shaking too hard to walk straight. She doesn't mention that every time she sees a woman dressed all in black, her stomach heaves like a ship at sea and she has to sit down or be sick. And she doesn't tell her that Orana has taken to putting water to warm before she goes to bed because she knows she'll be up soon enough making tea anyway, or that just the night before, when she'd awoken screaming in the full throes of a night terror, she'd flung herself so hard from Fenris that she'd knocked over her nightstand and nearly set the house afire.

Instead, Hawke throws her a cheeky grin and tells her, "I've always been the resilient type."

That's the last she sees of Aveline for several days. Donnic tells Hawke that Aveline's caught a tip on the remaining cultists; it is at this point that she discovers that the old man had not been among the dead in the catacombs, and it is at this point that she _knows_ that there are other girls out there, suffering as she did. Though Hawke wants more than anything to help with the investigation, Donnic shows her a note in Aveline's hand that orders Hawke in no uncertain terms to keep herself scarce until she has something more to go on than rumors. Hawke concedes with poor grace—she always leaves a winning impression of herself with Donnic, it seems—and stalks off to complain to an unsympathetic Fenris.

That week, she spends her evenings at The Hanged Man, trying to catch up on the month's worth of news she has missed from Varric and the equally-newsworthy gossip from Isabela. Anders is there more often than not, those nights, making sure that Hawke is neither imbibing Corff's concoctions nor overexerting herself during the day, and even Merrill stops by occasionally to chat and lose at diamondback. The patrons at the tavern give her the warmest welcome of all, the first time she returns; it's Varric's influence, she's sure, since the dwarf can't seem to help making the world fond of him and his friends by proxy, but the thankfulness she feels is real all the same.

Then, one night when Hawke is being spectacularly bluffed out of yet another sizable pot of silver, Aveline strides through the door with Fenris hard on her heels. Both of them look harried and a little wild around the edges, and when Fenris spots her in the corner where she sits with Varric, Merrill, and Anders, they make a beeline for the table with a single-minded purpose that makes Hawke forget her cards entirely.

"We've found him," Aveline says, her words clipped at the ends. The few people that had been lingering over their shoulders to watch the card game quietly drift away, sensing that the Champion of Kirkwall is about to supersede the woman losing at Wicked Grace. Isabela bumps Anders with her hip as she arrives at the table, drawn to the commotion, and Anders makes a noise of protest as his ale sloshes over the edge of his tankard.

Hawke doesn't even notice. "Found who, specifically?"

"The old man who imprisoned you," says Fenris. His lip curls, and Hawke's heart just about stops. "He is an apothecarist named Adom based here in Lowtown."

Hawke sucks in a breath. That's it, that's _it,_ she _remembers—_ remembers passing the tiny apothecary jammed between a squalid apartment and a seedy little inn; she remembers seeing a little spray of herbs in the window and she _had_ been short on embrium—she'd walked in, and there he'd been behind the counter with his white whiskery eyebrows and his easy smile and she hadn't even noticed the cloying incense numbing her senses until her knees were no longer steady beneath her, until her eyelids dragged down like they'd been weighted and the world had fallen black.

And then she'd awoken in her cell, blind and chained, and begun to break.

"He's heading a cell of those cultists in the foundry district." Aveline takes over, smoothing over Hawke's stunned silence, her hand gripping and releasing the hilt of her sword as if she is itching to draw it. "I think he has the missing girls with him, though Maker knows if they're still alive. I've summoned the Guard but I don't think they'll get there in time, and we've _got_ to stop him before he kills anyone else."

Hawke stands in a sharp movement, scattering cards and empty bottles across the tabletop. "Are you certain?" she asks, and doesn't know whether she wants them to be or not.

Fenris nods. That is enough.

She grabs her staff where it leans against the wall. "Let's go."

* * *

  
The halls of the abandoned foundry stink of smelted iron and sweat, the ceilings cut low and claustrophobic, but it is the blood spattered on the floor that makes her nauseous. She remembers that blood, remembers how it pooled and slicked on her skin as her feet were dragged through it, remembers the thick congealing stickiness of it between her fingers when they were broken. She shudders and hides it in the shadows cast by the torches, trying to ignore the shaking in her hands.

Fenris sees it, of _course_ ; he has turned to glance at her from where he leads their party with Aveline, and he drops back to her side. She is edgy and anxious and barely clamping down on her sparking magic, and more than anything she doesn't want him to know how the terror is swelling in her stomach. He falls into step with her, and ineffective a defense as it is, Hawke looks away.

"I'm fine," she says, free hand raised to forestall the protests she knows he will voice anyway.

The blade of his naked sword glitters between them in the torchlight. "You should not have come."

"To the _Void_ with that," Hawke hisses, her anxiety bleeding into irritation. "Don't you dare try to protect me from this."

His eyes narrow. "You can barely hold your staff upright. Should I be wary of misguided lightning again?"

He's needling her, she knows, testing the strength of her mind because she will be tested by someone less careful soon enough, but oh, that one _hurts—_ she hooks her fingers into the edge of his breastplate and yanks him to the corridor wall, out of the path of the others following them. Anders takes a step towards her and she jerks her head after Aveline; this won't take long, and she does not need help.

"That was uncalled for," she snaps as Anders disappears around the corner, anger scratching up the back of her neck. "I have the _right_ to be here. More right than anyone."

"You are not strong enough for this," Fenris says, tense and harsh. "You should go back to your home and let us finish this."

Hawke shakes him by his breastplate, trying to bite back her fear and now, her fury. She is genuinely hurt that he is suggesting this and incensed at herself for being so. "How can you say that? How can you tell me that I should just go—go sit on my laurels like a good little girl? I would never, _never_ have tried to keep you out of the fight when Danarius came for you, wouldn't have even dreamed of it! How can you, of all _people_ —" She shakes him again, harder, and he slings his sword over his back so his hands can grip her wrists like vises.

"You," he says, and the glare in his eyes stops her words in her throat, "have not slept without screaming for two weeks. You still bear the scars of the man we are about to kill. I lost you for a _month_ and when I found you chained in a hole in the ground like an animal, you did not know me." His grip tightens on her wrists, just to the point before pain, and though his voice drops, his eyes do not. "I watched you crawl away from me on your stomach to a woman who wanted to slaughter you. _You,_ who—" he makes a frustrated noise, searches for words, " _tu mihi karissima._ And now you race to throw yourself at the feet of the very people who did this in the first place. How can _you_ ask me not to protect you?"

She doesn't know Arcanum, but she knows what he says all the same. "Bastard," she whispers, and drags him down by his breastplate until she can kiss him. It is short and hard and all teeth and tongue, and when it is over she pushes him back and dashes the tears out of her eyes. "Protect me by watching my back."

His eyes are grim in disapproval and for a second she thinks he will force her to go whether she wills it or not, but in the end he tips his head forward a fraction, ceding this conflict to her. "Always."

Hawke gives him her own sharp nod in response and whirls on her heel, breaking into a jog to catch up to the others. Fenris follows, and she hears his sword slide free behind her.

They find them waiting just before an enormous double-wide door at the end of the hall with two dead guards at their feet, and Isabela pulls a face as she wipes a dagger on one of the guards' tunics. Merrill gestures for silence as they approach and Hawke slows to a careful toe-heel walk; she can hear rusting movements from inside, the echoes indicating it is a room nearly as large as the great hall from the catacombs, although the lack of distinct voices tells them nothing about the room's inhabitants. Aveline gestures at Fenris, and with the practiced ease of frequent combatants, the two of them slide to either side of the door. Fenris glances at the rest of them and then carefully, silently turns the handle and cracks the door open the width of two fingers, inclining his head just enough so that he can peer into the room.

He stands still a moment, counting. Hawke's heart is thudding in her chest. The hushed anticipation of battle thunders in her ears as it always does, but this time there is more to it, banked rage and a lust for vengeance and a spiny needling fear that digs into her lungs. What if the old man is not there? What if he _is?_ What if he looks at her with all the weight of an unspoken command as the Mother did and she loses herself just as easily to his will—what if Fenris is right and she shouldn't have come—

Fenris turns at the door and her spiraling thoughts collapse in on themselves. She has no time to be afraid for herself now, and besides, Fenris is watching her back. He holds up three fingers, then makes a closed fist—thirty enemies even. He glances back over his shoulder through the gap, double-checking, and then holds up a series of numbers that Hawke tallies in her head. Fourteen warriors—probably hired swords, she guesses, since the main force of the Followers of She had been decimated in her own rescue. A dozen mages, most of them probably hip-deep in blood magic, and four people of indeterminate specialty.

Hawke's mouth quirks. They've faced worse.

Anders pulls a little glass vial from his coat and drains it, then tosses a second one to Fenris, who catches it without looking and tucks it in into a pouch on his belt. He presses his shoulder to the door and Hawke braces herself in the tense coiling moment before the rush—and then he stops dead, his eyes widening in shock. "The old man has just entered the room," he says, barely bothering to whisper. "He has a woman with him." He doesn't have to say anything else, and suddenly no one is looking at Hawke. They all know what kind of woman he means.

"Then let's move," Hawke says, and they do.

* * *

  
The first guards who see them raise the alarm, their blades ringing free from their sheaths as they charge. There's a split-second of silence, a harsh breath when the swords shine silver-edged and falling, when the veils on the mages swirl with whorling magic, when Hawke gathers her power swift and swelling in her fingers like the surge of distant thunder—and then Fenris's sword sweeps up to meet the downswinging blade of his enemy, and it begins.

Hawke loses the next few moments in the frenzy that is pitched battle. Her world narrows to a crush of sound and light: the crisp clear chiming of steel on steel, the screams of warning and wounded both resounding from the high stone walls, the hissing crackle of magic arcing fire from her hand to the heart of a woman in a red veil. She hears a plated footstep crunch the ground behind her and ducks just as a thin-bladed dagger whistles through the air where her neck had been; an instant later, the man groans and falls backward, the ornate hilt of a knife protruding from the center of his forehead.

"Thanks," Hawke shouts, and Isabela tips an invisible hat before spinning out of the way of a woman wielding an enormous maul.

There's a bump at her elbow and she glances over to see Anders, eyes flickering light around the edges: Justice, seething for battle. He throws her a grim smile and she nods curtly before turning her back against his. The cool airy whisper of his magic soughs through her for a moment, and then it turns outward, laced with Justice's bitter bite, and Hawke hears a woman behind her shriek in agony.

A man in dark robes screams something and points at her from across the room. Hawke swivels on her heel and angles her staff at his heart, pushing out blasts of ice that shiver the air between them; he falls to his knees with a cry and fumbles at his belt for his knife before slicing it across his wrist—blood magic, Hawke realizes, and his hand gleams slick and dark and wet in the torchlight before he fists it at his chest. She sinks lower into her stance and sets her heels, preparing for the oily burst of magic she knows is coming—but abruptly, a shining, metal-clawed hand protrudes from the center of the man's chest, just left of his sternum. He looks down at it, the spell dying on his lips, and unfurls his fingers to touch the tips of the claws as if he is confused. The hand jerks back, then, leaving a fist-sized hole in the man's chest where his heart used to be, and slowly, he tips forward onto his face with a quiet thud.

Fenris gives her a sour look from where he stands over the blood mage's body, and Hawke tries not to smirk as he surreptitiously wipes his gauntlet on his trousers. He glances back at her—and his mouth opens in warning as he stares to her left; she brings her staff up in quick response and impales the woman charging at her through the throat. The mercenary's sword falls from nerveless fingers to clatter on the flagstones, voiceless words bubbling through her lips, and then she jerks, twice, and dies.

Hawke lowers her staff with a curse and puts a booted foot to the woman's collarbone, pushing her off the end of it. That had been luck more than anything else—it'd been the woman's own momentum that carried her to her death, not Hawke's strength, and she has only Fenris's warning to thank for her life. She looks back in his direction, meaning to thank him, but movement between them draws her attention—

—and her eyes land on the old man instead.

He stands on a small raised dais in the center of the room, oblivious to her stare. Huddled in a heap at his feet is a pathetic little pile of rags and long, unkempt blond hair, and Hawke feels a sudden icy rage press so hard behind her eyes that it nearly blinds her. Before she knows it, she is shouting in wordless wrath and pounding across the room, ignoring the arrows that shriek past her, the look of utter surprise that she glimpses on Aveline's face as she darts by—she leaps the last few feet in one go and skids to a stop on the dais between Adom and his sacrifice.

He stares at her open-mouthed, his white whiskery eyebrows climbing into his forehead, his warm and gentle eyes so wide the laugh lines around the corners have disappeared. His fingers slacken around the knife he holds shoulder-high and the tip of it droops; Hawke snaps up the bottom of her staff and it cracks into his chin. His head pops back on his neck—she sees a tooth go flying—and he staggers backwards, the knife falling free on the stone.

Hawke recognizes it in half a heartbeat—it is the same long knife the Mother had brought to Hawke's throat, the same narrow wicked blade gleaming in the torchlight—it skitters behind her and she lets it, turns to face Adom again.

He takes a step backward off the dais—she half-hopes he'll simply fall and break his neck—but suddenly there are two men in chainmail at his elbows, steadying him, their naked swords flashing fire into her eyes. She braces herself for the onslaught, angry and anxious, hoping the girl behind her isn't dead already—but her line of sight is abruptly blocked. It takes her a second to register what she's seeing: a lean back armored in thick, braced leather, muscled shoulders bunched under the weight of an enormous greatsword, thin lines of lyrium skating up tanned skin to disappear into hair that glints silver under the torches.

Fenris doesn't even look at her. He simply pushes her back with a blind hand towards the blond figure still pooled bonelessly on the dais, and then he swings his sword over his shoulder, and he charges.

Without hesitating, Hawke spins, leaving the old man and his guards to him, and runs the length of the platform until she can sink down on her knees next to the girl. She pushes the long, matted hair from her face, tucks a hand under her head and turns her over until she can see—

Her stomach roils.

The girl is a solid mass of bruises and broken bones. Chunks of her blond hair are missing, torn out by the roots—Hawke remembers vividly the gloved hands fisted in her own hair—one eye is swelled completely shut, and her nose looks like it has been broken, healed badly, and then broken again. A heavy chain dangles like a leash from a thick iron collar fastened around her neck, the skin at the edges of it lacerated and showing signs of deep infection. Hawke falters, confused—why the collar and not fetters, as they'd used with her? —and then she sees the grimy grey bandages at the end of one of the girl's wrists, at both of her ankles, and Hawke realizes.

They have cut off her feet at the ankles and her left hand at the wrist. Hobbled her, so that she cannot escape as Hawke had. So that she can never run again.

"Maker," breathes Hawke, not even aware she is speaking aloud. "This is my fault."

The girl stirs at the sound of her voice, although how she can even _hear_ it in the cacophony of battle Hawke has no idea, and the unswollen eye cracks open to reveal the faintest hint of blue under the glaze of confusion and pain. She doesn't look more than sixteen.

"Hi," says Hawke, cupping her head in one gentle hand and dipping into her magic. "How are you feeling?"

The girl looks at her blankly, and Hawke remembers with a sick twist in her stomach what she waits for. "You have my permission to speak," she adds, the words acidic on her tongue, but the girl's eyes flicker to life.

Her mouth cracks open, her dry lips sticking together and bleeding at the corners. Hawke snatches at the waterskin at her belt that she'd brought for just this reason and pops out the cap with her teeth, then carefully tips it to her lips. She sucks at it greedily, the water dribbling over her jaw to leave trails in the grime, and when it is empty she lets out a terrifying noise of mindless gratitude and flops her head back onto Hawke's knee.

"Thank you for the water," she says, her voice rough and thick with illness and pain.

"You're welcome," Hawke says, swallowing her own emotions as best she can. "We're here to rescue you. Do you know your name?"

The girl's brow furrows as if she doesn't understand the question. "I," she whispers, and then she chokes and has to start again, "I am going to be the vessel for the Mother."

A cold chill slaps against the back of Hawke's neck, but she still tries for gentleness. "I know, my darling. I know." Her healing magic probes at the stumps of the girl's ankles and Hawke winces; the wounds are old and poorly-treated, and even if she survives the next few hours, she will have a long recovery ahead. "How long have you been here?"

Her head rolls on her shoulders, nearly slipping off Hawke's knees before she answers. "I have always been here."

"Surely you had some kind of home, some family? A mother, a brother? Sisters?"

Suddenly her eyelids flutter, her gaze turning inward for the briefest second—and then she turns her head violently away from Hawke's face and shudders. "No," she whispers, her voice shivering with emotion. "No, no, no. I have always been here to serve the Mother."

Hawke lets it go for the moment, though her heart lifts—the girl remembers _something_ , at least, her mind not lost quite yet to the ravages of the new Mother and her bloody _blasted_ old man—she forces herself to smile as the girl rolls away from Hawke's knee to curl bonelessly against the stone floor. "All right, darling. Just...don't worry. Everything will be all right."

There's a bellow behind her and suddenly Fenris is staggering backwards until he stops himself just shy of the two of them on the dais. He's bruised and nicked in a few places and his hair is staining red behind his left ear, but he doesn't look too much the worse for wear; he lets out a vicious shout and springs forward, and in a flash of sword and lyrium's silver light the second guard falls dead at his feet.

Hawke takes advantage of the moment to survey the room, still murmuring meaningless assurances to the blond girl, even though she knows from experience that she barely understands them. Everywhere she looks there are broken bodies and glistening sprays of blood, torches sputtering oil and sparks over the last pockets of combat. Even as she watches, Aveline leans back out of range of a man bringing a greatsword to bear and Varric launches a bolt that thuds into the nape of the man's neck. Merrill dances by, her staff glowing, and Isabela swaggers around the body of a dead mage with her dagger still jutting from his ribs.

Fenris growls behind her, then, his voice hot with the flush of battle. "It is time to end this."

Hawke pushes to her knees and turns. Fenris is advancing on Adom, his sword dark with blood; the old man has nearly palpable fear in his warm and gentle eyes and Hawke grimaces at the sudden choking rush of hatred that swells in her throat. She _wants_ to watch him cower, to throw himself on Fenris's mercy and find none. She wants to watch him _die_.

The old man's eyes dart to her where she crouches on the dais, hovering protectively over his would-be sacrifice, healed and almost whole and never bending her head to him again, waiting to see him choke on his own blood—and then they flick past her, just for an instant, and triumph lights his face more clearly than any sun.

"Do it, child," he says clearly, and the sound of his voice rings to the rafters of the foundry.

Hawke can't breathe, can't think, can't move fast enough—she starts to turn, start to stretch out her hand but it's too slow, too late—

—the knife glitters in the girl's one hand, the knife that skittered away on the stone—

—Hawke _reaches_ —

—and the girl brings the blade across her own throat in one swift wet slice.

Sparks spray where the steel scrapes iron. Hawke screams—she can't help it—and tears the knife from the girl's unresisting fingers. She clamps her hands to the gash that spurts blood; _severed the damn artery_ , a distant part of her brain tells her, and healing pours from her hands in a brilliant wash of light. Hawke doesn't understand how she'd even had the _strength_ — she has cut so deep and she can't stop the bleeding—

" _Anders_!" Hawke shrieks, because the girl is her as she was and she has to, _has_ to save her. "Anders, _help_ _me_!"

His hands are on her hands, suddenly, his healing magic a cresting wave where hers was only a stream, and Hawke flings herself backwards, lurches to her feet, her fingers soaked in the girl's blood.

The room falls silent around them. She sees Fenris kneeling on Adom's back in the corner of her eye, his sword impaled through the man's spine; sees Isabela sheathing her daggers without ceremony; sees Merrill and Aveline and Varric dispatching the last of their enemies and slowly approaching them on the dais, but she has eyes only for Anders and the girl under his hands, young and white and utterly still.

Hawke knows. Hawke knows even before Anders pushes his hair out of his face and looks up at her that it is too late. _She_ is too late, too late to save her, too late to save a damned thing.

Her stomach churns. She is going to faint; she is going to be _sick_ ; she has to get out of this bloody place that reeks of rot and iron and dead things. Swallowing down her bile, she tightens her grip around her staff until the grain of the wood anchors her to the moment. "Okay. Okay. Check the side passages," she says, and her voice is almost steady. "See if there are any other survivors."

Aveline nods. "I think there are one or two of the guards left alive. We'll take them to the Gallows and see what the interrogators can wring out of them."

"Good." She glances to Fenris, avoiding Anders, still kneeling before her, and the empty corpse that lies at his feet. "The old man is dead?"

Fenris's eyes narrow, telling her he doesn't quite believe she's as controlled as she'd wish, but he doesn't push it. "Yes."

"Good," she says again, and starts to wipe her face before she remembers the girl's blood still hot on her hands. "Everyone, spread out. Meet back here as soon as you've combed the place."

They scatter, with a few of them tossing lingering glances in her direction. Aveline pulls Fenris off to the side of the hall for a moment, their conversation too low for her to hear, and Hawke takes advantage of his distraction to snag Varric by the shoulder. "Make sure you get the cuffs off," she says, and Varric nods.

Against her will, her eyes go to the nameless girl's bloody body on the dais. Her knees nearly buckle; Varric grips her around the waist. "You okay there, Hawke?"

"Oh, Maker," she gasps. It is too much—the bile rises in her throat again and Fenris was _right_ , she shouldn't have come, she shouldn't have—she shudders so hard Varric almost loses his grasp. "Varric, I've got to go. I've got to get out of here, oh, _flames_ —"

She pushes away from him roughly and falters her way to the doors at the end of the hall, slow and wavering at first, and then faster, unable to care whether anyone notices. The door slips shut behind her; she catches a glimpse of Varric leading Fenris away from the dais, covering for her exit and she will need to thank him later for understanding, but right now, she must get outside or lose her mind.

Hawke makes it exactly four steps outside the foundry before her legs collapse under her. She goes to all fours and heaves, throwing up everything she has in her stomach and then some, her arms shaking under the strain, her hair hanging limp around her face. She gags, coughs, retches again, wipes her mouth on the back of her hand and her tearing eyes on her sleeve, and then she shoves her way to her feet.

She puts one hand on the white stone wall to steady herself. Hawke breathes, a harsh ragged sound that hangs in the air around her, and takes a step away from the foundry; the next step comes easier, and easier still the step after that, and eventually, she disappears into the shadows of Lowtown, a smear of blood on the wall the only thing she leaves behind.

* * *

  
Fenris finds her in her room, hours later.

She is wedged into the corner under the window as far as she can get, her knees drawn to her chest and her head buried in her arms. The thin light of the moon trickles in through the window to pool on her dark hair, her shoulders, and her hands, laced over the back of her neck and still raw from scrubbing. She tips her head just enough to glimpse his face, calm and unworried, his eyes paling more grey than green in the moonlight, and then she buries it again.

She hears the latch quietly click closed behind him and the soft thump of his sword as he leans it against the wall. Hawke blows out a breath against her knees. "Seems I'm always making you chase after me, lately."

A pause, then two muffled clanks, one right after the other: his gauntlets, dropped to the desk. "Then know that I will always look."

Her hands tighten behind her neck. Had that girl had anyone to look for her? Did someone wait, even now, for a daughter to come home, a young woman with blond hair and blue eyes and an unburdened smile? She presses her forehead closer to her knees and closes her eyes. "Did you find any of the other girls?"

There's the zip of leather sliding through metal as he unbuckles his breastplate. "There were five women in the foundry besides the one who...died. Two of them still live. They are at the mage's clinic in—poor condition." The leather creaks as he rests the armor against the leg of the desk, and then he pads almost silently across the carpet to her side. "Aveline compared her to the descriptions of the missing women," he says, quieter. "Her name was Gloria."

Gloria. It fits. "Family?"

"A mother and four sisters. They live in the more affluent section of Lowtown." She senses his weight shift as he bends, but he doesn't touch her, and she is grateful. She doesn't want to be comforted, not tonight. "She was taken to the Circle at a very young age. Her sisters did not know her well."

Hawke says nothing, but they both know what he means: at least they will not mourn their loss so badly.

Eventually, Fenris steps forward into the opposite corner of her alcove, sinking down to sit against the wall opposing hers. He stretches out his legs in front of him, crossed at the ankles; they are long enough that his feet reach her hip across the carpet, and he brushes them against her just once, just to let her know that he is there, and then he folds his arms over his chest and falls still. He cannot give her peace tonight, but somehow, the fact that he is _there_ , waiting with her for dawn, even if he does nothing more than track the silent stars across the sky while she grieves: for Gloria, for the other girls whose names she does not yet know, for _herself_ —

It is enough.

* * *

  
Neither of the girls at Anders's clinic survives. Fenris brings her the news. It does not surprise her, not exactly; instead, it feels quiet and heavy, like grey clouds are closing out the sky over her head, and she can no longer find the sun through them.

Hawke attends six funerals over the next week. Aveline goes with her as the official representative of the Guard, the kerchief around her neck temporarily replaced with a black scarf. The others leave them to it; the last thing Hawke wants is to turn these events into a spectacle for the Champion and her companions, so she goes with Aveline alone, and meets the families that have been left behind. Most of the funerals are small, only a handful of mourners paying their respects before the pyres, and one by one, Aveline offers her condolences to the girl's mother or brother or husband with a steady poise that Hawke cannot hope to match. She tries, only once, to speak to a suddenly-childless father, and the blankness in the man's eyes is worse than any Tranquil's.

Gloria's funeral is the last.

It rains the whole day in Kirkwall and the puddled streets are nearly empty of life. The only attendees are her mother and sisters, who stand in a small, huddled clump of mourner's cloth and blond hair that not even the drizzling rain can dampen. The girls all look terribly young; the youngest can be no more than three, and she sits hefted on her sister's hip, wide-eyed and silent and very small in black. Their mother stands stone-still before the pyre where her daughter's body lies shrouded, the rain pulling the veil from her hair and tracking down the lines in a face meant more to smile than weep.

The attending chanter recites the tenth chapter of Tranfigurations, the pattering of the rain his only accompaniment, and the words are so familiar to Hawke now that she could speak them in his place. When he finishes, he moves to the pyre and tries to spark flint, but the straw is soaked through and the fire won't take. He strikes steel again and again, each blow a scrape against Hawke's nerves that makes her flinch; then one of the girls stifles a dry sob that hangs dead in the rain, and that is enough for Hawke.

The pyre bursts into a tower of whirling flame that stretches high above them, leaping stormward as if it is trying to burn away the sky itself. The chanter jumps back, startled, then recovers himself; he bows his head before the crackling pyre, raising his hand in benediction, and finishes the last verses. "For there is no darkness in the Maker's Light, and nothing that He has wrought shall be lost," he says, and the rain hisses where it strikes the burning straw. Gloria's family stands tall and still, their hair blazing gold in the firelight, and Hawke turns away. She knows what comes next.

Aveline touches her shoulder as she passes. Hawke throws her a tremulous smile, then pulls the hood of her sodden cloak close over her head as she leaves behind the spire of snapping flames, its thunder muted by the roaring silence of a family one less than full. The chanter's last words hum after her through the rain like a snatch of quiet song.

"The Light shall lead her safely  
Through the paths of this world, and into the next."

If there is light, Hawke cannot see it.

* * *

  
Hawke flings open the door to Fenris's mansion without bothering to knock. It is unlocked, as she expects—it's not like he's the type to fear thieves, and besides, there are enough broken windows in the place to tempt the greedy and the idiotic away from any obvious entrances—but more likely, he'd known she'd come before she did. She's avoided him for ten days, ever since Gloria's funeral, ever since those fat grey clouds had settled heavy on her shoulders. She is miserable and confused and in an absolutely _foul_ mood, sick to death of rattling around the estate and scaring Orana with her black looks, and when she'd stormed from the house just past dawn her feet had led her here without conscious thought. It feeds her annoyance, somehow, and it discomfits her how much she enjoys her anger.

She strides in, letting the door slam shut behind her, and pauses as her eyes adjust to the gloom; she can hear movement ahead, footsteps and grunts and sharp steel singing through air, and it draws her like a siren.

Fenris is standing dead-center of the great room at the heart of the mansion, stripped to the waist, his bare shoulders glistening with sweat in the cool mid-morning light. His eyes are half-shut in concentration as he sweeps his enormous sword over his head, slowly, then levels it at an invisible opponent and holds it there with point unwavering so long that Hawke's own arms ache in sympathy. She doesn't interrupt—he would ignore her at the moment anyway—and skirts the edge of his reach until she arrives at the far wall between the twin staircases. A pair of rickety wooden chairs and a slightly sturdier table have been dumped here almost haphazardly, and Hawke spins a chair on one leg to sit in it backwards, folding her arms along the back of it and resting her chin on her wrist. She watches Fenris in silence.

He steps forward and then back, his knees bent deep into the stance as his sword traces a long arc in the air around him, and then he _lunges_ in a sudden strike that pulls the muscles of his back taut. The lines of his tattoos ripple as he slides into a new position without lowering the greatsword, and then they catch the shafting sunlight in a sudden iridescent flash as he moves into the next series of steps. His feet slap against the bare stone with the faster paces, his toes splaying out as he pivots on the ball of one foot, his heels swirling up dust that hangs silver in the air around him; his hands slide with sure movements down the braided leather of the grip, his long fingers wrapping around the pommel as he reverses the blade in a wide, swathing stroke that sends the dust into a glittering, eddying dance.

He looks completely calm, completely unconcerned by the world in general and her in particular, and Hawke doesn't know why but it— _irritates_ her. Readjusting her head on her arms, she flicks her middle finger against her thumbnail, letting a tiny little flame spurt free to flare orange an instant before dying. He glances at her, then, but doesn't break his stride as he turns away in a whirlwind of broad thrusts; she gives his back a moody look and flicks her finger again.

Just as Hawke begins to think she might as well come back another time when he is less inclined to completely _ignore_ her, Fenris darts into a set of lightning-quick steps that take him the whole length of the room. His sword flashes and gleams above his head, swings around his hand like liquid light, flickers and dances forward as if he wields a weapon half its weight. One foot swivels on the ground and he faces her, suddenly, from the far side of the hall; he takes three short steps forward and _leaps_ —he hangs in the air with his sword lifted over his head like an Old God stepped from the pages of a storybook, his eyes narrowed and brilliantly green, the lyrium stretching up his chest lit like silver—and then his sword crashes to the stone in a ringing strike that peals through the empty mansion. Hawke feels the wind of it lift her hair from her cheek and scowls, trying to ignore the sudden pounding of her heart.

Fenris picks himself up—barely breathing heavily at all, Hawke sees, though his hair is stuck to his forehead with sweat—and pulls a rag she hadn't noticed from his waist. He mops at his face and shoulders, then runs it along the length of the bloodless blade.

The irritation rises again and Hawke snorts. "Oh, no. Dust."

Unruffled, Fenris leans the now-dust-free sword against the wall and looks at her. "There is no shame in keeping a weapon clean."

"I'll clean your weapon," Hawke grumbles, and the flame that flicks from her fingers is perhaps a little goutier than she means it to be.

Fenris glances at her hand, and at last she sees a faint trace of displeasure in his eyes. "I would prefer it if you did not do that here."

She flicks her fingers again, nettling him and enjoying it, and this time the larger flame is entirely intended. "Oh, sorry. Does this bother you?"

He scowls, wiping his hands on the rag, and approaches her where she sits. "Stop."

The push to obey shudders through her, but she is irked and glad to be so, and the heat of it shoves back the pressure of the order in her head. "Shan't," she says, and a fat little flare pops out of her hand to hover over her knuckles. Fenris swipes the back of his hand through the air over hers, dissipating the fire into nothingness, and Hawke straightens in the chair, annoyed and showing it. "How _rude_!"

He laughs, short and unamused, and he crosses his arms over his chest. "I hardly think I am the one being ill-mannered at the moment."

"Because ignoring your guests is the height of civility." Hawke mimics his scowl derisively, aware somewhere in the back of her head that she's being unreasonable and probably a right idiot as well, but she ignores that in favor of goading Fenris. Cupping her hands over the back of the chair, palms up as if in supplication, she summons a shot of flame the size of a watermelon and holds it there, inches from Fenris's stomach. "Oh, my stars," she says, wide-eyed in mock-surprise, her lower lip pulling into a pout. "How clumsy of me."

Fenris curls his lip into a snarl and grabs her wrist with fingers like iron. "Control yourself, Hawke!"

Hawke jerks away from him, the rickety chair tipping forward with a hollow bang, and the fire vanishes upward between them. "A thousand apologies, messere," Hawke says, her voice dripping with scorn. Fenris is angry, now, and she is pleased to see it. "I do hope the evil little mage with her evil scary magic didn't frighten you."

"You have been speaking too long with Anders," snaps Fenris, his hands flexing at his sides, his face darkening. "No one is as dangerous as a volatile mage. _Especially,"_ he adds with a sour glare at her hands, sounding thoroughly disgusted, "one who apparently models her ideas of restraint after Tevinter's _magisters_."

He couldn't have incensed her more if he'd slapped her. "You bloody hypocrite," Hawke says, the anger surging in her like a thunderhead. "You want to talk about volatility? Then let's talk about you sticking your hand right through everyone that looks at you cross-eyed, hmm? Let's talk about templars running hot and cold just as they please and dropping Tranquil behind them like flies." Sparks jump between her fingers and she clenches them into fists. "Or maybe you'd _prefer_ that kind of _restraint."_

Two steps and he's looming over her, the back of her thighs pressed hard against the table, his eyes snapping like green lightning. "Control yourself," he says again, and this time his tone is not a warning but an open threat. Hawke's anger swells into full and utter rage.

"Bastard!" she shouts, and the word echoes in the rafters _bastard_ _bastard_ as she plants her hands on his chest and shoves. He stumbles back and she follows, pressing her advantage, shoving again when she reaches him. "Control me," she taunts him, jeering and mocking and livid. "Damp down the magic in the dangerous angry mage. Maybe you could even go back to the foundry and get some of those wonderful cuffs from the dear departed Mother, all simmering with blood magic like a teakettle." Laughter splinters out of her—his eyes are furious and she revels in it. "I bet you'd like nothing more than to strip the magic right out of me."

Fenris sets his heels and seizes her wrists when she goes to shove him again, and this time she can't break free. "You would thank me for it if I could," he snarls.

"So you would put me right back there," she spits. Her mind is white with fury. "Chain me right back into the hole in the ground with the Mother and Gloria and all the other dead women where I'd be nice and helpless and tame, a compliant little mage to trot after you like a dog on a leash, panting for any scrap of magic you deign to drop. My own personal Danarius." She twists in his hands, desperate to hit him, but she can't get free because he's holding her wrists too tightly, as merciless as the manacles she's never been able to free herself from. "Void _take_ you, Fenris, you bloody arrogant shit."

"You wish for the freedom of the magisters. Their _power_ ," he hisses, and before she knows what he's doing, he yanks her hand forward until her palm slaps against his throat, where the long lines of lyrium skim thrumming under his skin. "What about this power? Take it!"

For an instant—she _wants_ to, sees herself pulling on the singing silver threads until they glare white, sees herself sucking him dry to feed her fire and her ice and her wrath until he lies boneless and empty at her feet. She stares at him, her jaw clenched so tight it creaks, the muscles jumping wildly under the strain. He jerks his head towards hers until his hair falls against her forehead, his lip curled, his eyes savage. " _Take_ _it_!" he shouts.

Her fingers clench around his neck. They curl so hard into his throat she can feel his heartbeat, thudding just as rapid as hers—she _hates_ him for saying this, for doing this, hates him for knowing her so well, hates him for saving her. He glares at her without blinking, his dark eyebrows drawn snap-tight over his fury, all the muscles in his neck and arms and chest so tense they ridge under his skin. His knuckles are white where they grip her wrist. She wants to kill him.

Hawke kisses him instead.

The kiss is fierce and hot and brutal, her fingers still digging into his throat, his hand still iron-fixed around her wrist. She will not take the lyrium under his skin but she _will_ take this, her tongue delving into his mouth and claiming it even as he falters in surprise. He snarls into her lips and his hand unclenches from her wrist to fist in the hair at the base of her neck, forcing her head back—and then it is _his_ tongue that takes _her_ mouth, the insistent wildness of his strength pulling her forward, the lean muscles of his chest pressed full against hers.

Hawke bites his lip hard. Fenris jerks away, teeth bared, but Hawke will not be cowed. There's a wild cry bubbling up in her chest—he has given her an order but she will not submit, she _won't—_ and she grasps the back of his head with the hand he freed. "I refuse," she says, low and fierce, her hand flexing on his throat, "to obey you." He opens his mouth and she covers it with hers, silencing him.

"I _refuse_ to obey you," she hisses again, and his fist tightens in her hair but she shuts him up a second time because she's not finished, because he is going to understand this whether he likes it or not. She kisses him again, and again, hard and angry kisses that take more than they give, shoving down the weight of his commands until they wither into nothing, until they are only words. "I am _not_ ," Hawke says against his mouth, her fingers digging into his scalp, "one of your magisters. I am a free woman in love with a _bastard_ of an elf—" he shudders at _love_ and his eyes go wide and she doesn't care, not in the slightest, because it's _true_ , "—and I am that of my own will. I _choose_ that. And if you can't handle the thought of this mage choosing _of that will_ to care for you without lusting after your tattoos, then—you can just march yourself and your sanctimonious orders straight back to Tevinter, you stupid stubborn _fool_."

Fenris growls, a low rumbling deep in his chest that coils through her belly, and then he wraps his free arm around her and crushes her against him. His mouth seals over hers in a searing heat as blazing as her rage had been, and she can't help the noise she makes as she pulls him closer.

His grip in her hair loosens—his hands scour down her back and waist and ass, and then he lifts her bodily against him. Hawke obliges, wrapping her legs around his waist, wrapping her arms around his neck, still fighting for control of the kiss. A part of her realizes that Fenris is moving, making his way with her up the stairs towards his bedroom; the rest of her is more occupied by the feel of his hands gripping her hips, the smell of him all smoke and sweat and tangy lyrium, the light in his eyes as feral as her own.

He kicks open the door—she hears the wood crunch—and then they are both toppling over onto his bed in a tangle of limbs and gasps and entirely too many clothes. Her hands are at the collar of her robes in seconds—it's too hot and she needs to be free of them, needs to feel his hands on her skin—and then Fenris is pushing her hands out of the way as his mouth drops to her throat.

"Fenris— _ah_ —" Hawke tries to speak, to tell him she can undress her own damn self, but his teeth are grazing down her shoulder to sink onto the junction of her neck and shoulder, and she loses her train of thought. "Fenris," she says again, fainter; he bites down on her neck and her fingernails rake over his back of their own volition.

She feels him smirk against her throat and that, more than anything else, clears her head; a moment later, she has rolled them over on the bed until she can straddle him, his eyes narrowing as he grips her waist. Her robes are half-undone already—the elf has always multitasked well, blast him—and Hawke leans over him, rolling her hips as she does so, savoring the flutter of his eyes and the shudder of his neck as he swallows.

"I bet you think you're terribly clever," she purrs, and her hand skates over the muscles of his chest and down his stomach to tug at the waistband of his pants. She drops her head and plants an open-mouthed kiss on the barely-there mark just under his collarbone, the only remnant of her rescue still unfaded, and feels him jerk; one of his hands slides to cup her breast through her robes, ungentle and tantalizing as she moves to the hollow of his throat. She sweeps her tongue over the straining tendon there and rolls her hips again, teasingly—he growls again and _Maker_ , that sound does things to her—and a moment later, with the sudden sound of tearing cloth, her robes are falling free from her shoulders to puddle around her knees.

She should care. She should care a lot, actually, since these robes were brand new and had cost her nearly six months of savings, but his mouth is hot on hers and his hands are finally, _finally_ on her bare skin, and she doesn't know if the gooseflesh is from the morning air or his touch. His thumb flicks over her nipple and she shivers; the calluses on his palm scrape coarse over her breast and she stifles a moan, choosing instead to dip forward and press her mouth to the shell of his ear.

Fenris bucks under her with a gasp and she laughs softly into his ear, triumphant. He starts to snarl something but she darts out her tongue to trace the edges of his ear, grazes her teeth over the lobe, pauses to suck gently on the very tip of it, and he lets out a groan; he squeezes her breast with one hand and the other goes to her ass, cupping it and pulling her hard against him.

They seem to both realize at the same time that he is, in fact, still wearing pants. Hawke pulls back from his ear with a last nip and scrapes her nails down his chest, over the lines of lyrium that sing under them, and tugs at the laces at his waist. She has only a moment's notice when his muscles bunch in his arms and his neck strains forward before he has flipped them both, her poor shredded robe sighing from her knees to the floor.

"I am occasionally clever," he says with a half-smile still hard around the edges from his earlier anger, his weight heavy over her stomach, and his voice is rough and _dark_ and it thrills right through her.

"Not so clever. You're still wearing pants." Hawke hooks a leg around his waist and shifts her hips, as if to demonstrate that it is indeed a problem, and Fenris's eyes hood over.

He kisses her, hard, and then moves to her neck, and lower. "You tempt fate, woman," he mutters against her collarbone.

"I'm not trying to tempt fate," Hawke says breathlessly, threading one hand into the white mess of his hair as his mouth skims over the swell of her breast. "I'm trying to tempt—ah, _Fenris_ —"

His tongue laves rough over her nipple again and her fingers clench in his hair. "Dirty trick," she gasps, and arches into his touch. "Stop and die." His chest rumbles over her stomach and she feels his hand scrambling between them, seeking out the laces she's abandoned; he shifts over her in a sudden movement and then at last his leggings follow her robes to the ground, forgotten. Again his head bends over her breast, his dark skin made darker by her own paleness, the lyrium nearly sparking where she rubs against it.

Hawke grasps his jaw and tugs. As much as she likes the feel of his tongue she wants to taste him more, and he kisses his way back up her chest until his mouth is sealed over hers, until he is pressed flush between her legs and she can feel how very tense he is, how much he is holding himself back to keep from hurting her, and it's not that she _wants_ to be hurt but Hawke is tired to the bone of feeling fragile—she wants him to trust in her strength over his and _let_ _go_.

"Hawke," he groans into her mouth, husky and hoarse, and the sound of it sweeps through the hot tight coiling in her stomach to curl her toes. She slides her leg higher on his waist in open invitation; he stares down at her with pupils blown wide for a long moment, bracing himself over her with straining arms, and then he kisses her with a fervor bordering on savagery as he enters her.

It has been too long. She has missed him too much and she has gone through too much and it has been _too_ _long_ , and she can't help the moan she makes as he drops his head to her shoulder and presses his open mouth to the muscle there. He moves, then, slowly at first and then faster, and her hips roll to meet his as he quickens. She doesn't want gentle, doesn't want soft, doesn't want careful—she wants rough and hard. She wants to feel _alive_.

His hands slip under her shoulders, raking his long fingers over the tender scars there with something like desperation, as if he is a man given back a treasure he had thought was lost. Hawke answers in kind, scrapes her fingernails down the muscled, sweat-slicked planes of his back where the tattoos run straight and his teeth dig into her lip in retaliation— _this_ is what she wants, the stormy wild abandon, rasping and furious and perfect. She leans back, breathless and grinning as her tongue darts out to trace the marks of his teeth on her lip and he pulls her mouth back to his; his kiss is ravaging, rough and territorial, and Hawke feels the twining heat in her belly twist in on itself.

"Fenris," she breathes, because she is close, _so_ close, and his pace increases as if her words are electric. "Fenris," she says again, letting everything she's feeling out in her voice, all the heat and light and shuddering love, and then the heat snaps tight in her belly and she arches like a bowstring on his bed, her arms seizing him as close as she can get as she clenches around him, as the waves crash down behind her eyes.

The growl rumbles again in his chest, feral and possessive, and then Fenris's voice soars to a victorious shout and his hips rock hard into hers. He pumps once, twice, three times, and then he grabs her face roughly and kisses her, bracing his weight on his elbows as best he can as they ride out the tide of sensation that swallows them both.

Eventually, when her pulse slows to something slightly less than a deafening roar, when Fenris's breath is not quite so harsh in her ear—he's panting _now_ , she thinks with no small sense of satisfaction—he rolls to the side with a groan. Hawke follows him over, her sweaty skin sliding smoothly over his, resting her head on the lyrium lacing over his chest and pressing her ear to the place where his heart beats. One of his arms wraps around her in rare comfort, and his fingers draw over her shoulders in a slow motion that pulls the last of her anger out of her.

She lets out a long sigh over his skin. "Fenris..."

"Hm."

"I don't really think you're a bastard. Most times. Sometimes you are."

He snorts and Hawke feels her mouth curve into a smile. "I will consider that a compliment, Hawke."

She loves the way he says her name. "So intended."

Her hair moves over her forehead as he laughs almost-silently, and then he turns his head and presses a painfully tender kiss to her temple.

Silence drops around them gently, a quiet peace that Hawke doesn't mind so much anymore. The curtains in Fenris's room are ancient, thick navy brocade shredded with age and old tantrums, and sunlight, still cool with the morning air, pours through the holes and gaps like drops of burnished brass to play across their skin. It sets the lyrium in his skin alight where it touches, and the silver glow is radiant under her cheek.

Hawke remembers the words the chanter spoke at Gloria's funeral. "The Light shall lead her safely," she murmurs, and flicks a finger at the lines that course over Fenris's chin.

"Hm?"

She thinks of the Mother, then, of the damp dark cell with the iron ring in the floor, of the old man who smiled at her with warm eyes and brought her food and sound and light. She thinks of the wooden chair in the center of the great hall where she was allowed her magic; she thinks of Merrill cracking open her chains and of Isabela and Aveline bringing her breakfast; she thinks of Anders, exhausting himself if only to heal one more of her wounds. She thinks of Varric and his sheaf of papers, covered with his close handwriting and Hawke's words; and of Gloria, Gloria of the golden hair and the blue eyes, and her sisters tall and black before her pyre.

She thinks of Fenris, who will always look for her.

Hawke takes in a breath, and then she lets it out; when it goes it takes more weight than she knew she carried, and then Hawke smiles, a _real_ smile, unburdened and light and clear. "Nothing," she says. Fenris's hand tightens on her shoulder, and the silence around them swells with life, with the birds chirping outside, with the distant voices of Hightown citizens calling to each other, with the rise and fall of Fenris's breath by her ear. She soaks it in, all of it, letting the sounds wash over her like sunlight at the end of winter; his heart beats quiet and steady under her fingertips, a safeguard, and a promise, and Hawke's eyes slip closed.

  
He lives. So will she.

  


the end  



End file.
